Qass Q^iAS 

Book -M/^- 




1 



! 




I 



^ihv't-^^y i^- V'X-i^io 

-■vi:;' 



EASTERN 



LIFE, 



PRESENT AND PAST. 



HARRIET 



BY 



'^ARTINEAU 



" Joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light : and not only 
dehghted in beholding the variety of things, and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out 
and discern the ordinances and decrees, which, throughout all these changes, are infallibly 
observed." — Bacon. Advancement of Learning, I. 



COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUlvCE. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

LEA AND BLANCHARD, 
1848. 



PHILADELPHIA : 
K. AND F. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 



PREFACE. 



In the autumn of 1846, I left home for, as I supposed, a few 
weeks, to visit some of my family and friends. At Liverpool, I 
was invited by my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Richard V. Yates, to 
accompany them in their proposed travels in the East. By the 
zeal and kindness of those who saw what a privilege this journey 
would be, all obstacles in the shape of business and engagements 
were cleared away; and in a month, I was ready to set out with 
my kind friends. — At Malta, we fell in with Mr. Joseph C. Ewart, 
who presently joined our party, and remained with us till we 
reached Malta on our return. There is nothing that I do not owe 
to my companions for their unceasing care and indulgence: but 
one act of kindness I felt particularly. They permitted me to 
read to them my Egyptian journal, (there was no time for the 
others,) that I might have the satisfaction of knowing: whether 
they agreed in my impressions of the facts which came under 
our observation. About these facts there is an entire agreement 
between them and me. — For the opinions expressed in this book, 
no one is answerable but myself. 

It is by permission of my companions that I have thus named 
them here, and spoken of them in my book as occasion required. 
I am truly obliged to them for granting me this freedom, by which 
I am spared much trouble of concealment and circumlocution 
which, in their opinion and mine, the personal affairs of travel 
are not important enough to require and justify. — Not having 
asked a similar permission from our comrades in our Arabian 
journey, I have said as little as possible about them, and sup- 
pressed their names. I shall be glad if they find anything in my 



iv 



PREFACE. 



narrative to remind them pleasantly of that remarkable season of 
our lives, — our five weeks abode in the Desert. 

Sir G. Wilkinson must be almost tired of the testimonies and 
thanks of grateful travelers : but I must just say that he was, by 
his books, a daily benefactor to us in Egypt. It is really cheering 
to find that any one can be so accurate, and on so large a scale, 
as his works prove him to be. Such almost faultless correctness 
requires a union of intellectual and moral powers and training, 
which it is encouraging for those who are interested in the results 
of travel to contemplate. After making the fullest use of his 
" Modern Egypt and Thebes," we find only about half-a-dozen 
points in which we differ from him. 

In regard to that difficult matter, — difficult to those who do not 
understand Arabic, — the spelling of the names of places and per- 
sons in Egypt and Arabia, — I have done what every one will 
allow to be the safest thing ; — I have followed the authority of 
Mr. Lane wherever I could. If any English reader complains of 
me for altering the look of familiar Egyptian names, it is enough 
to reply that Mr. Lane knows better than any one, and that I copy 
from him. If I have departed from his method anywhere, it is 
merely because I had not his authority before me in those par- 
ticular instances. 

H. M. 



AxBLEsiDE, 2Dth March. 1848. 



CONTENTS. 



PAET I. 

EGYPT AND ITS FAITH. 

PA&E 

CHAPTER 1. 

First sight of Africa. — First sights in Africa. — Alexandria -" - - 17 

CHAPTER n. 

From Alexandria to Cairo. — First sight of the Pyramids. — Preparations for 

Nile Voyage ........ 24 

CHAPTER HI. 

Nile incidents. — Crew. — Birds. — Face of the country. — The heavens. — 

Towns and shores, between Cairo and Asyoot - - - - 32 

CHAPTER IV. 

Asyoot. — Old sites. — Some elements of Egyptian thought. — First crocodiles. 

— Soohadj. — Girgeh. — Kenneh - - - - - - 41 

CHAPTER V. 

Walks ashore. — First sight of Thebes. — Adfoo. — Christmas Day - - 55 

CHAPTER VI. 

Aswan. — Slaves. — First ride in the Desert. — Quarries. — Elephantine. — River 

scenery. — Preparations for Nubia. — First sight of Philos - - 63 

CHAPTER VII. 

Ascent of the Cataract - . _ . . . 75 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Nubia. — The Second Cataract ...... 78 

CHAPTER IX. 

Historical Sketch, from Menes to the Roman occupation of Egypt - - 89 



vi 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER X. 

Aboo-Simbil. — Egyptian conceptions of the gods .... 113 

CHAPTER XI. 

Ibreem.- — Dirr. — Subooa. — Dakkeh. — Garf Hoseyn - • - 121 

CHAPTER XII. 

Dendoor. — Kalab".sheh. — Biggeh. — Philce. — Leaving Nubia - - 131 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Kom Umboo. — Quarries of Silsileh. — Adfoo. — Eilethyia. — Old Egyptian life. 

— Isna. — Arment • - - - - - - .147 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Thebes. — European travelers and native Arabs. — The Pair. — The Rama- 

seum. — El-Kurneh - - - - - - - 158 

CHAPTER XV. 

Thebes. — Old Egyptian views of Death and Hereafter. — The Priests. — Inter- 
ments. — Tomb of Osirei - 166 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Thebes. — Tombs. — Mummies. — Medeenet Haboo. — Dayr el Bahree. — El- 

Karnac - - - - - - - - -185 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Manufactures at Kenneh. — Planners of the crew. — Excursion to Abydus - 196 

CHAPTER XVm. 
Benee Hasan. — Masgoon. — Pyramids of Dashoor and Sakkara. — Memphis. — 

Mummy pits. — Consecration of brutes ... - - 202 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Visit to the Pyramids. — Ascent of the Great Pyramid. — Interior. — Traditions 
and history about the Pyramids. — The Sphinx.— Farewell to Ancient 
Egypt 216 

CHAPTER XX. 

Inundation of the Nile. — Famine in Egypt ----- 230 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Cairo. — Streets and bazaars. — Mosques. — Citadel. — Fete of the Birth of the 
Prophet. — Entrance of the Malihmil. — The ]\Iagician. — Society in Cairo. 
—Mr. Lane 243 



CONTENTS. VU 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Hareem . - - . . , - . 259 

CHAPTER XXni. 

Present condition of Egypt - - - - - - - 270 Z*^" 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Gardens of Roda and Shoobra. — Heliopolis. — Petrified forest. — Tombs of the 

Memlook kings. — The Nilometer. — Leaving Cairo • - - 276 



PART II. 

SINAI AND ITS FAITH. 
CHAPTER I. 

Moses before the Exodus. — Route to the Red Sea. — Camel-riding - - '287 ^ 

CHAPTER II. 

Desert travel. — The Red Sea. — Suez. — Landing in Arabia. — Wells of Moses 293 

CHAPTER III 

Journey to Sinai - - - - - - - . . - 301 

CHAPTER IV. 

Convent of Mount Sinai. — Ascent of Djebel Mousa. — Ascent of Horeb - 310 

CHAPTER V. 

Moses at Mount Sinai - - - - - - - 318 

CHAPTER VI. 

From Sinai to Akaba - - - - - - '333 

CHAPTER VII. 

From Akaba to Petra - - - - - - - 342 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Petra - - - - - - - - - 348 



CHAPTER IX. 

Mount Hor. — From Petra to the frontier of Palestine - - • 364 



vui 



CONTENTS. 



PART III. 

PALESTINE AND ITS FAITH. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I. " 

Entrance upon the Holy Land. — Hebron. — Bethlehem - - - 375 

CHAPTER n. 

Elements of the religioiis life of the Hebrews at the time of the birth of 

Christ 388 

CHAPTER HI. 

Jerusalem. — The English Mission. — ]\Iosque of Omar. — Jews" Place of Wail- 
ing. — Valley of Jehoshaphat. — Greek fire. — David's Tomb and Csenaculum. 
— Armenian Convent. — Lepers. — Cave of Jeremiah. — Environs - - 403 

CHAPTER IV. 

Bethany. — Plain of Jericho. — Elisha's Spring. — Jericho. — The Jordan. — The 

Dead Sea. — Convent of Santa Saba ..... 415 

CHAPTER v.. 

Jerusalem. — Church of the Holy Sepulchre. — Valley of Gihon. — Pool and 
Fountain of Siloam. — Tombs of the Prophets. — Mount of Olives. — Garden 
of Gethsemane. — Tombs of the Kings. — G<)vernor"s house - - 430 

CHAPTER VL 

Samaritans. — Simon Magus. — Wayside Scenery. — Jacob's Well at Sychar. — 

Samaritan synagogue. — Sebaste, — Djeneen .... 440 

CHAPTER VH. 

Plain of Esdraelon.— Nazareth. — Ride to Mount Carmel. — Convent of Mount 

Carmel. — Acre. — Return to Nazareth . . - . - 454 



CHAPTER VHL 

Cana. — Mount of the Beatitudes. — Tiberias. — Plain of Gennesaredi. — Szafikd. 

— Upper Valley of the Jordan. — Panias. — Leaving Palestine - - 469 



CONTENTS. 



ix 



PART IV. 

SYRIA AND ITS FAITH. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER 1. 

Entrance upon the high lands of Syria. — Nimrod's Tomb. — Field of Damas- 
cus. — Damascus and environs. — Some characteristics of Mohammedanism. 
— ^Damascus as a residence - - - ... - 485 

CHAPTER n. 

Ain Fijji.— Zebdany.— Baalbec— The Bekaa - - - - 502 

CHAPTER m. 

Crossing the Lebanon.— The cedars. — Eden. — Journey to Batroun. — Last 

encampment - - - - - - -511 

Appendix - . . . _ . , . „ 519 



1 



\ 



PAET I. 
EGYPT AND ITS FAITH. 



" They are extremely religious, and surpass ail men in the worship they render 
to the gods." Herodotus, 11. 37. 



" Wherefore they were highly celebrated by Apollo's oracle (recorded by Por- 
phyrius), and preferred before all other nations for teaching rightly ' that hard and 
difficult way, that leadeth to God and happiness.' " 

Cudworth. Intellectual System, Book I. 4. 

"For, as for the uttermost antiquity, which is like Fame that muffles her head, and 
tells tales, I cannot presume much of it; for I would not willingly imitate the 
manner of those that describe maps, which, when they come to some far countries, 
whereof they have no knowledge, set down how there be great wastes and deserts 
there ; so I am not apt to affirm that they knew Httle, because what they knew is 
little known to us." Bacon. Interpretation of Nature, ch. V. 



EGYPT AND ITS PAITH. 



CHAPTER I. 

FIRST SIGHT OF AFRICA.— FIRST SIGHTS IN AFRICA.— ALEXANDRIA. 

My first sight of Africa was on a somewhat lurid November evening, 
when the descending sun marked out by its red light a group of purple 
rocks to the westward, which had not been visible till then, and which 
presently became again invisible when the sun had gone down behind 
them, and the glow of the sky had melted away. What we saw was 
the island of Zembra, and the neighboring coast of Tunis. Nothing in 
Africa struck me more than this its first phantom appearance amidst 
the chill and gathering dusk of evening, and with a vast expanse of sea 
heaving red between us and it. 

My next sight of Africa was when I came on deck early on the 
morning of the 20th of November. A Lybian headland was looming 
to the south-east. Bit by bit, more land appeared, low and gray ; then 
the fragments united, and we had before us a continuous line of coast, 
level, sandy and white, with an Arab tower on a single eminence. 
Twice more during the day we saw such a tower, on just such an 
eminence. The sea was now of a milky blue, and lustrous, as if it 
were one flowing and heaving opal. Presently it became of the lightest 
shade of green. When a tower and a ruined building were seen to- 
gether, every one called out "Alexandria 1" and we expected to arrive 
by noon: but we passed the tower and ruins, and saw only a further 
stretch of low and sandy coast. It was three o'clock before we were 
in harbor. — When we came on deck after dinner, we found that we 
were waiting for a pilot; and that we ought to be growing impatient, 
as there was only an hour of daylight left, and the harbor could not be 
entered after dark. There was no response from a pilot-boat which 
we hailed; and one of our boats was sent off" to require the attendance 
of the pilot, who evidently thought he could finish another piece of 
business before he attended to ours. He was compelled to come ; and 
it was but just in time. The stars were out, and the last brilliant 
lights had faded from the waters, before we anchored. As we entered 
the harbor, there was to the south-west, the crowd of windmills which 
are so strange an object in an African port: before us was the town, 
with Pompey's Pillar rising behind the roofs: further north, the Pasha's 
palace and hareem, with their gardens and rows of palms coming down 
2 



18 



EASTERN LIFE. 



to the margin of the sea: further round, the lighthouse; and to the : 
east, at th^ point of the land, a battery. The Pasha's men-of-war, ' 
which do not bear well a noon-day examination, looked imposing I 
amidst the brilliant lights and deep shadows of evening, their red flag, 
with its crescent and single star, floating and falling in the breeze and 
lull. But for the gorgeous light, there would have been nothing beau- 
tiful in the scene, except the flag (the most beautiful in the world) and 
the figure of our pilot as he stood robed, turbaned and gesticulating on i 
the paddle-box ; — a perfect feast to western eyes : but the light shed j 
over the flat and dreary prospect a beauty as home-felt as it does over j 
the gray rain-cloud when it brings out the bow. As we were turning | 
and winding into the harbor, a large French steamer was turning and j 
winding out — setting forth homewards — her passengers on deck, and 
lights gleaming from her ports. Before we came to anchor, she was 
aground ; and sorry we were to see her lying there when we went 
ashore. 

Before our anchor was down, we had a crowd of boats about us, 
containing a few European gentlemen and a multitude of screaming 
Arabs. I know no din to be compared to it but that of a frog concert 
in a Carolina swamp. We had before wondered how our landing was 
to be accomplished ; and the spectacle of the departure of some of our 
shipmates did not relieve our doubts. We could not pretend to lay 
about us with stout sticks, as we saw some amiable gentlemen do, 
purely from the strength of their philosophical conviction that this is 
the only way to deal with Arabs. Mr. E. had gone ashore among the 
first, to secure rooms for us : and what we three should have done 
with ourselves and our luggage without help, there is no saying. But 
we had help. An English merchant of Alexandria kindly took charge 
of us ; put our luggage into one boat and ourselves into another, and 
accompanied us ashore. The silence of our little passage from the 
ship to the quay was a welcome respite : but on the quay we found 
ourselves among a crowd of men in a variety of odd dresses, and boys 
pushing their little donkeys in am^ong us, and carts pulled hither and 
thither — everybody vociferating and hustling in the starlight. Our 
luggage was piled upon a long cart, and we followed it on foot : but 
there was an immediate stoppage about some custom-house difiiculty — 
got over we know not how. Then the horse ran away, broke his 
girths, and scattered some of our goods. At last, however, we achieved 
the w^alk to our hotel — a walk through streets not narrow for an eastern 
city. All the way we had glimpses of smoking householders in their 
dim interiors, turbaned artisans, and yellow lamplight behind latticed 
windows. The heat was oppressive to us, after our cool days at sea. 
The rest of the evening was fatiguing enough. 

The crowd of Bombay passengers hurrying over their preparations, 
their letter-writing and their tea, in order to start for Cairo at nine 
o'clock; the growling and snarling of the camels, loading in the 
Square ; the flare of the cressets ; — the heat, light, noise and hurry 
were overpowering after the monotony of sea life. I sought repose in 
letter-writing, and had nearly forgotten our actual position when I \vas 



ALEXANDRIA. 



19 



spoken to by a departing ship-mate, and, looking up, saw a Greek 
standing at my elbow, an Arab filling up the door-way, and a Nubian 
nursemaid coming in for a crying child. — Before ten o'clock, all was 
comparatively quiet — the Square clear of omnibuses, camels, and the 
glare of torches, and our hotel no longer a scene of crowding and con- 
fusion. There was nothing to prevent our having a good night, in 
preparation for our first day of African sight-seeing. 

When I looked out of my window early the next morning, I saw, at 
the moment, nothing peculiarly African. The Frank Square is spa- 
cious, and the houses large; but they would be considered shabby and 
ugly anywhere else. The consular flag-staves on the roofs strike the 
eye; and the flood of brilliant sun-light from behind the minaret made 
the morning as litde like England in November as could well be. 
Presently, however, a siring of camels passed through the square, 
pacing noiselessly along. I thought them then, as I think them now, 
after a long acquaintance with th^, the least agreeable brutes I know. 
Nothing can be uglier, unless it be the ostrich ; which is ludicrously 
like the camel, in form, gait and expression of face. The patience of 
the camel, so celebrated in books, is what I never had the pleasure of 
seeing. So impatient a beast I do not know — growling, groaning and 
fretting whenever asked to do or bear anything — looking on such oc- 
casions as if it longed to bite, if only it dared. Its malignant expression 
of face is lost in pictures: but it may be seen whenever one looks for 
it. The mingled expression of spite, fear and hopelessness in the face 
of the camel always gave me the impression of its being, or feeling 
itself, a damned animal. I wonder some of the old painters of hell did 
not put a camel into their foreground, and make a traditional emblem 
of it. It is true, the Arab loves his own camel, kisses its lips, hugs its 
neck, calls it his darling and his jewel, and declares he loves it exactly 
as he loves his eldest son: but it does not appear that any man's affec- 
tion extends beyond his own particular camel, which is truly, for its 
services, an inestimable treasure to him. He is moved to kick and 
curse at any but the domestic member of the species, as he would be 
by the perverseness and spite of any other ill-tempered creature. The 
one virtue of the camel is its ability to work without water; but, out of 
the desert, I hardly think that any rider would exchange the willing, 
intelligent and proud service of the horse for that of the camel, which 
objects to everything, and will do no service but under the compulsion 
of its own fears. 

When the camels had passed, some women entered the square from 
different openings. I was surprised to see their faces hardly covered. 
They pulled their bit of blue rag over, or half over, their faces when 
any one approached them, as a matter of form; but in Alexandria, at 
least, we could generally get a sight of any face we had a mind to see ; 
excepting, of course, those of mounted ladies. As we went up the 
country, we found the women more and more closely veiled, to the 
borders of Nubia, where we were again favored with a sight of the fe- 
male countenance. 

The next sight in the square was a hareem, going out for a ride — a 



20 



EASTERN LIFE. 



procession of ladies on asses — each lady enveloped in a sort of balloon 
of black silk, and astride on her ass — her feet displaying a pair of bright 
yellow morocco boots. Each ass was attended by a running footman; 
and the officer of the hareem brought up the rear. 

By this time, my friends were ready for a cup of coffee and a walk 
before breakfast: and we went forth to see what we could see. After 
leaving the square, we made our way through heaps of rubbish and 
hillocks of dust to the new fortifications, passing Arab huts more sordid 
and desolate-looking than I remember to have seen in other parts of the 
country. We m,et fewer blind and diseased persons than we expected ; 
and I must say that I was agreeably surprised, both this morning and 
throughout my travels in Egypt, by the appearance of the people. 
About the dirt there can be no doubt — the dirt of both dwellings and 
persons — and the diseases which proceed from want of cleanliness ; but 
the people appeared to us, there and throughout the country, sleek, 
well-fed and cheerful. I am not sure that I saw an ill-fed person in all 
Egypt. There is hardship enough of other kinds — abundance of 
misery to sadden the heart of the traveler — but not that, as far as we 
saw, of want of food. I am told, and no doubt truly, that this is partly 
owing to the law of the Kuran by which every man is bound to share 
what he has, to the last mouthful, with his brother in need; but there 
must be enough, or nearly enough food for all, whatever be the law of 
distribution. Of the progressive depopulation of Egypt for many years 
past, I am fully convinced; but I am confident that a deficiency of food 
is not the cause, nor, as yet, a consequence. AVhile I believe that 
Egypt might again, as formerly, support four times its present popula- 
tion, I see no reason to suppose, amidst all the misgovernment and 
oppression that the people suff'er, that they do not still raise food 
enough to support life and health. I have seen more emaciated, and 
stunted, and depressed men, women and children in a single walk in 
England, than I observed from end to end of the land of Egypt. So 
much for the mere food question. No one will suppose that in Egypt 
a sufficiency of food implies, as with us, a sufficiency of some other 
things scarcely less important to welfare than food. 

We saw this morning a sakia* for the first time — litde thinking how 
familiar and interesting an object the sakia would become to us in the 
course of three months, nor how its name would for ever after call up 
associations of the flowing Nile, and broad green fields, and thickets of 
sugar-canes, and the melancholy music of the waterwheel, and the pic- 
turesque figures of peasant children, driving the oxen in the shady 
circuit of the weed-grown shed. This, the first we saw, was a most 
primitive afiJ'air, placed among sand hillocks foul with dirt, and its 
wooden cogwheels in a ruinous state. We presently saw a better one 
in the garden of the German Consul. It was on a platform, under a 
trellice of vines. The wheel, which was turned by a blind folded ox, 
had rude earthen jars bound on its vanes, its revolutions emptying 
these jars into a trough, from which the water was conducted to irrigate 
the garden. 

* Waterwheel. 



ALEXANDRIA. 



21 



In this garden, as in every field and garden in Egypt, the ground was 
divided off into compartments, which are surrounded by little ridges, 
in order to retain whatever water they receive. Where there is arti- 
ficial irrigation, the water is led along and through these ridges, and 
distributed thus to every part. I found here the first training of the 
eye to that angularity which is the main characteristic of form in 
Egypt. It seems to have been a decree of the old gods of Egypt that 
angularity should be a prime law of beauty— and the decree appears to 
have been undisputed to this day — and one of the most surprising 
things to a stranger is to feel himself immediately falling into sympathy 
with this taste, so that he finds in his new sense and ideas of beauty a 
fitting avenue to the glories of the temples of the Nile. 

The gardens of Alexandria looked rude to our European eyes; but 
we sav/ few so good afterwards. In the damp plots grew herbs, and 
especially a kind of mallow, much in use for soups : and cabbages, put 
in among African fruits. Among great flowering oleanders, marvel of 
Peru, figs and oranges, were some familiar plants, cherished, I thought, 
with peculiar care under the windows of the consular houses ; — monthly 
roses, chrysanthemums, love-lies-bleeding, geraniums, rosemary, and, 
of course, the African marigold. Many of these plots are overshadowed 
by palms, — and they form, in fact, the ground of the palm-orchards, as 
we used to call them. Large clusters of dates were hanging from under 
the fronds of the palms; and these were usually the most valuable pro- 
duct of the garden. The consular gardens are not, of course, the most 
oriental in aspect. We do not see in them, as in those belonging to 
Arabs, the reservoir for Mohammedan ablution, nor the householder 
on the margin winding on his turban after his bath, or prostrating him- 
self at his prayers. 

The contrast is great between these gardens and the sites of Cleo- 
patra's Needle and Pompey's Pillar, — curiosities which need not be 
described, as every one has seen them in engravings. The needle 
stands on the burning sands, close to the new fortification wall, whose 
embankment is eighty feet high, and now rapidly inclosing the town. 
The companion obelisk, Vv'hich was offered to England, but not con- 
sidered wortli bringing away, is now buried in this embankment. 
There it will not decay; for there is no such preservative as the sand 
of Egypt. When, and under what circumstances, will it again see the 
light ? In a time when it may be recognized as an object known now ? 
or in an age so distant as that the process of verification must be gone 
over again? Everyone now knows that these obelisks are of the time 
of the early Pharaohs, some of whose names they bear inscribed; that 
they stood originally at Heliopolis, and were transported to Alexandria 
by the Caesars. 

The pillar stands in a yet more desolate place. We reached it 
through the dreariest of cemeteries, where all was of one dust-color, — 
even to the aloe which was fixed upon every grave. The graves were 
covered with mortar, much of which was broken and torn away. A 
Christian informant told us that this was done by foxes and dogs; but 
a Mohammedan declared that such ravage was prevented by careful 



22 



EASTERN LIFE. 



watching. There is a rare old book which happily throws light on 
what this pillar was. In the twelfth century, while the Crusaders were 
ravaging Syria, a learned physician of Bagdad, named Abdallatif, visited 
Eg^^pt, and dwelt a considerable time there. He afterwards wrote an 
admirable account of whatever he himself saw in the country ; and his 
work has been translated by some Arabic scholars. The best transla- 
tion is by De Sacy (Paris, 1810). — Abdallatif tells us that the column 
(now called by us Pompey's Pillar) which is so finely seen from the 
sea, was called by the Arabs " the pillar of the colonnades ;" that he 
had himself seen the remains of above four hundred columns of the 
same material, lying on the margin of the sea : and he tells us how they 
came there. He declared that the governor of Alexandria, the ofiicer 
put in charge of the city by Saladeen, had overthrown and broken these 
columns to make a breakwater! "This," observes Abdallatif, "was 
the act of a child, or of a man who does not know good from evil." 
He continues, " I have seen also, round the pillar of the colonnades, 
considerable remains of these columns; some etitire, others broken. 
It was evident from these remains that the columns had been covered 
by a roof which they supported. Above the pillar is a cupola sup- 
ported by it. I believe that this was the portico where Aristotle taught, 
and his disciples after him ; and that this was the academy which 
Alexander erected when he built the city, and where the library was 
placed which Amrou burned by the permission of Omar."* De Sacy 
reminds us that the alleged destruction of this portico must have taken 
place, if at all, at most thirty years before the visit of Abdallatif; so 
that as "all the inhabitants of Alexander, without exception," assured 
that traveler of the fact, it would be unreasonable to doubt it.t He 
decides that here we have the far-famed Serapeum. — From the base of 
the pillar the view was curious to novices. The fortifications were 
rising in long lines, where groups of Arabs were at work in the crum- 
bling, whitish, hot soil; and files of soldiers were keeping watch over 
them. To the south-east, we had a fine view of Lake Mareotis, whose 
slender line of shore seemed liable to be broken through by the first 
ripple of its waters. The space betv/een it and the sea was one ex- 
panse of desolation. A strip of vegetation, — some marsh, some field, 
and some grove, — looked well near the lake ; and so did a little settle- 
ment on the canal, and a latteen sail, gliding among the trees. 

We had a better view than this, one morning, from the fort on ^Nlont 
Cretin. I believe it is the best point for a survey of the whole district; 
and our thinking so seemed to give some alarm to the Arabs, who 
ceased their work to peep at us from behind the ridges, and watch what 
we did with telescope, map and compass. The whole prospect was 
bounded by water, — by the sea and Lake jNIareotis, — except a little 
space to the north-east; and that was hidden by an intervening minaret 
and cluster of houses. Except where some palms arose between us 
and Lake Mareotis to the south, and where the clustered houses of the 
town stood up white and clear against the morning sky, there was no- 

* Abdallatif. Ixelation de TEgypte. Livre I. ch. 4. f Appendix A. 



ALEXANDRIA. 



23 



thing around us but a hillocky waste, more dreary than the desert, be- 
cause the dreariness here is not natural but induced. — If we could have 
stood on this spot no longer ago than the times of the Ptolemies (a date 
which we soon learned to consider somewhat modern) it would have 
been more difficult to conceive of the present desolation of the scene 
than it now is to imagine the city in the days of its grandeur. On the 
one hand, we should have seen, between us and the lake, the circus, 
with the multitude going to and fro ; and on the other, the peopled 
gymnasia. Where Pompey's Pillar now stands alone, we should have 
seen the long lines of the colonnades of the magnificent Serapeura. 
On the margin of the Old Port, we should then have seen the towers 
of the noble causeway, the Heptastadium, which connected the island 
of the Pharos with the mainland. The Great Harbor, now called the 
New Port, lay afar this day, without a ship or boat within its circuit; 
and there was nothing but hillocks of bare sand round that bay where 
there was once a throng of buildings and of people. Thereabouts stood 
the temple of Arsinoe, and the theatre, and the inner palaces; and there 
was the market. But now, look where we would, we saw no sign of 
life but the Arabs at work on the fortifications, and a figure or two in 
a cemetery near. The work of fortification itself seems absurd, judg- 
ing by the eye ; for there appears nothing to take, and therefore nothing 
to defend. Except in the direction of the small and poor-looking town, 
the area within the new walls appears to contain little but dusty spaces 
and heaps of rubbish, with a few lines of sordid huts, and clumps of 
palms set down in the midst; and a hot cemetery or two, with its crum- 
bling tombs. I have seen many desolate-looking places, in one country 
or another ; but there is nothing like Alexandria, as seen from a height, 
for utter dreariness. Our friends there told us they were glad we staid a 
few days, to see whatever was w^orth seeing, and be amused with some 
African novelties ; for this was the inhabitants' only chance of inspiring 
any interest. Nobody comes back to Alexandria that can help it, after 
having seen the beauty of Cairo, and enjoyed the antiquities of Upper 
Egypt. The only wonder would be if any one came back to Alexan- 
dria who could leave the country in any other way. 

Before we quitted Mont Cretin this morning, we looked into a hol- 
low where laborers were digging, and saw them uncover a pillar of 
red granite, — shining and unblemished. Some were picking away at 
the massive old Roman walls, for the sake of the brick. It is in such 
places that the traveler detects himself planning wild schemes for the 
removal of the dust, and the laying bare of buried cities all along the 
valley of the Nile. 

During the four days of our stay at Alexandria, we saw the usual 
sights; — the Pasha's palace ; the naval arsenal; and the garden of the 
Greek merchant where the Pasha goes often to breakfast ; and we en- 
joyed the hospitality of several European residents. We also heard 
a good deal of politics ; not a word of which do I mean to write down. 
There is so much mutual jealousy among the Europeans resident in 
Egypt, and, under the influence of this jealousy, there is so little hope 
of a fair understanding and interpretation of the events of the day, that 



24 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the only chance a stranger has of doing no mischief is by reporting 
nothing. I have my own impressions, of course, about the political 
prospects of Egypt, and the character of its alliance with various Eu- 
ropean powers ; but while every word said by anybody is caught up 
and made food for jealousy, and a plea for speculation on the future, 
the interests of peace and good-will require silence from the passing 
traveler, whose opinions could hardly, at the best, be worth the rancor 
which would be excited by the expression of them. 



CHAPTER II. 

FR03I ALEXANDRIA TO CAIRO.— FIRST SIGHT OF THE PYRA3IIDS.— 
PREPARATIONS FOR NILE VOYAGE. 

Ox the 25th of November, we left Alexandria, rising by candle-light 
at six, and seeing the glorious morning break by the time we were 
dressed. Our days were now nearly eleven hours long : at the short- 
est, they w^ould be ten. We were not struck, as we expected to be, 
by the shortness of the twilight. Instead of the immediate settling 
down of darkness, after the disappearance of the sun, I found that I 
could read small print for half an hour after sunset, in our most south- 
erly latitude. 

I do not remember to have read of one great atmospheric beauty of 
Egypt ; — the after-glow, as we used to call it. I watched this nightly 
for ten weeks on the Nile, and often afterwards in the desert, and was 
continually more impressed with the peculiarity, as well as the beauty, 
of this appearance. That the sunset in Egypt is gorgeous, everybody 
knows ; but I, for one, was not aware that there is a renewal of beauty, 
some time after the sun has departed and left all gray. This discharge 
of color is here much what it is among the Alps, where the flame 
colored peaks become gray and ghastly as the last sunbeam leaves 
them. But here, everything begins to brighten again in twenty min- 
utes ; — the hills are again purple or golden, — the sands orange, — the 
palms verdant, — the moonlight on the water, a pale green ripple on a 
lilac surface : and this after-glow continues for ten minutes, when it 
slowly fades away. 

Mr. E. had brought with him his noble dog Pierre, Avhich created a 
far greater sensation in Alexandria than we did. European men and 
women are seen every day there; but so large a dog had probably 
never been known in that region. Women and children, and even men, 
fled into their houses, or behind walls, at Pierre's approach, every 
morning during our walks. Pierre was not safe. Between the jea- 
lousy of the native dogs, the fears of the Arabs, and the perils of the 
desert, Pierre had little chance of secure traveling; and so his master 
sent him home. We left Alexandria without Pierre : but we had a 
much better servant in the dragoman engaged there by Mr. E., — Alee 
Mustafa, — who traveled with us till we reached Alexandria again, the 



VOYAGE TO CAIRO. 



25 



next May, and did his duty by us admirably. He is a native Egyp- 
tian, young and strong, able and experienced in his work, and faithful 
and correct in his money transactions. We met with other traveling 
parties as content with their dragomen as we were with ours : and I 
at present remember only one which was cursed with a bad attendant. 
When we consider what qualifications are requisite in the office, we 
must see that the dragomen must be a superior class of people. It 
was one of my amusements to study all whom I met; and when I 
saw what their knowledge of languages was, — what their efficiency in 
daily business, their zeal in traveling, and their familiarity with the 
objects en route wherever we went, their temper in times of hurry 
and disaster, their power of command co-existing with their diligence 
and kindliness in service, I felt that some of us might look very small 
in our vocations, in comparison with our dragomen. 

We proceeded in an omnibus to the Mahmoudieh Canal, where we 
went on board the boat which was to carry us to Atfeh, at the junction 
of the canal with the Nile. The boat was taken in tow by a smaller 
steamer, named by a wag " the little Asthmatic." We heard a good 
deal of her ailments,-— the cracks in her boiler, and so forth; so that 
we hardly expected to reach Atfeh in due course. — The villas in the 
neighborhood of Alexandria are pleasantly surrounded with gardens, 
and fenced by hedges or palings hung with the most luxuriant creepers ; 
but the houses are of glaring white, and look dreadfully hot. — The 
villages on the banks are wretched-looking beyond description ; the 
mud huts square, or in bee-hive form; so low and clustered and earthy, 
that they suggest the idea of settlements of ants or beavers, rather than 
of human beings. Yet we were every few minutes meeting boats 
coming down from the country with produce, — various kinds of grain 
and roots, in heavy cargoes. Some of these boats were plastered with 
mud, like the houses ; and so thickly that grass grew abundantly on 
their sides. — On the heaps of grain were squatted muffled women and 
naked children ; naked men towed the boats, — now on the bank, and 
now wading in the mud ; and muffled women came out of the villages 
to stare. To-day there seemed to be no medium between wrapping 
up and nakedness ; but it became common, up the country, to see 
women and girls covering their faces with great anxiety, while they 
had scarcely any clothing elsewhere. 

We saw the other extreme of dress in a passenger on board our 
boat; — the chief eunuch of the royal hareem at Cairo. Neither his 
beautiful dress, — of the finest cloth, amply embroidered, — nor his 
attendants and appliances could impress me with the slightest sense of 
dignity in the case of this extraordinary-looking being. He was quiet 
ill his manners, conversed with apparent ease, said his prayers and 
made his prostrations duly on the top of the kitchen, telling his beads 
with his long and skinny fingers ; but his emaciation and ugliness 
baffled all the usual associations with the outward signs of rank. I 
could not think. of him as an official of high station. 

This is the canal which, as everybody knows, cost the lives of above 
twenty thousand people, from the pasha's hurry to have it finished, and 



26 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the want of due preparation for such a work in such a country. 
Without tools and sufficient food, the poor creatures brought here by 
compulsion to work died off rapidly under fatigue and famine. Before 
the improvements of the pasha are vaunted in European periodicals as 
putting European enterprises to shame, it might be as well to ascertain 
their cost, — in other things as well as money ; — the taxes of pain and 
death, as well as of piastres, which are levied to pay for the pasha's 
public works. There must be some ground for the horror which 
impels a whole population to such practices as are every day seen in 
Egypt, to keep out of the reach and the ken of government : — practices 
such as putting out an eye, pulling out the teeth necessary for biting 
cartridges, and cutting off a forefinger, to incapacitate men for army 
service. The fear of every other sort of conscription, besides that for 
the supply of the army, is no less urgent; and it is a common practice 
for parents to incapacitate their children for reading and writing by 
putting out an eye, and cutting off the forefinger of the right hand. 
Any misfortune is to be encountered rather than that of entering the 
pasha's army, the pasha's manufactories, the pasha's schools. This 
can hardly be all baseless folly on the part of the people. If ques- 
tioned, they could at least point to the twenty-three thousand deaths 
which took place in six months, in the making of the Mahmoudieh 
Canal. 

The pasha is proud of this canal, as men usually are of achieve- 
ments for which they have paid extravagantly. And he still brings 
his despotic will to bear upon it, in defiance of nature and circumstance. 
I was told to-day of his transmission of Lord Hardinge by it, when 
Lord Hardinge and everybody else believed the canal to be impassable 
from want of water. This want of water was duly represented to the 
pasha: but as he still declared that Lord Hardinge should go by that 
way and no meaner one. Lord Hardinge had only to wait and see how 
it would be managed. He went on board the steamer at Alexandria, 
and proceeded some way, when a bar of dry ground appeared extend- 
ing across the canal. But this little inconvenience was to be no impe- 
diment. A thousand soldiers appeared on the banks, who waded to 
the steamer, and fairly shouldered it, with all its passengers, and car- 
ried it over the bar. The same thing happened at the next dry place, 
and the next: and thus the pasha is able to say that he forwarded Lord 
Hardinge by his own steamer on his own great canal. 

Nothing can be more dreary than the scenery till within a short dis- 
tance of Atfeh. The field of Aboukeer was nothing but hillocky 
desert, with pools in the hollows : and after that, we saw little but 
brown mud banks, till we came to the acacias near Atfeh. It is a 
pity that other parts of the canal banks are not planted in the same 
way. Besides the beauty of the trees, — to-day very pretty, with the 
light pods contrasting with the dark foliage, — the shade for man and 
beast, and the binding of the soil by vegetation would be valuable. 

It was dusk before we reached Atfeh. Some moonlight mingled 
with the twilight, and with the yellow gleams which came from sordid 
windows, seen through the rigging of a crowd of small vessels. There 



VOYAGE TO CAIRO. 



27 



were prodigious bustle and vociferation while we were passing through 
the lock, and getting on board the steamer which was to carry us to 
Cairo. But by seven o'clock we were fairly off on the broad and 
placid Nile. The moonlight was glorious ; and the whole company 
of passengers sat or lay on deck, not minding the crowding in their 
enjoyment of the scene, till the dews became so heavy as to send 
down all who could find room in the cabins. — I have a vivid recollec- 
tion of that first evening on the Nile, — an evening full of enjoyment, 
though perhaps every other evening I spent on it showed me more. I 
saw little but the wide quiet river, — the broadest, I believe, that I had 
ever been on ; and a fringe of palms on the banks, with here and there 
a Sheikh's tomb* hiding among them, or a tall white minaret springing 
above them. 

Two ladies kindly offered me a place in their inner cabin, where I 
could lie down and have the benefit of an open window : but the place 
was too unclean for rest. At 3 a. m., we went a-ground on a mud 
bank. I saw the quivering poles of the Arab crew from ray window, 
and was confounded by the noise overhead — the luggage being shifted 
with all possible outcry. We just floated for a minute, and then stuck 
fast again. By the cessation of the noise, I presently found that the 
matter was given up till daylight; and I slept for above an hour; — a 
very desirable thing, as these groundings made it appear uncertain 
whether we should reach Cairo before another night. 

When I went on deck, before seven, I found we were opposite Sais. 
But there was nothing to be done. No one could go ashore; and the 
best consolation is that there is nothing to be seen there by those who 
can only mourn over the mounds, and not penetrate them. A mob of 
Arabs was brought down to our aid ; and a curious scene was that of 
our release. On deck our luggage was piled without any order; and 
blankets were stuffed in among trunks and bags. From these blankets 
emerged one fellow-passenger after another, till the set of unshaven and 
unwashed gentry was complete. In the river was a long line of naked 
Arabs, tugging and toiling and screaming till the vessel floated. When 
we were once more steaming towards Cairo, and the deck was cleared, 
and the wondrous atmosphere assumed all its glory, and the cool wind 
breathed upon our faces, we presently forgot the discomforts of the 
night, and were ready for a day of novelty and charm. 

Breakfast was served on deck, under an awning; and greatly was it 
enjoyed by one of the passengers — a catholic lady of rank, who was 
traveling absolutely alone, and shifting for herself very successfully. 
She helped herself to an entire chicken, every bone of which she picked. 
While doing so, she was disturbed by the waiters passing behind her, 
between the two tables ; and she taught them, by vigorous punches, 
what it was to interfere with her elbows while they were wanted for 
cutting up her chicken. Immediately after this feat, she went to the 
cabin, and kneeled down to her prayers, in the face of as many as 

* These Sheikhs' tombs are very like village ovens : square huts, with each a 
white cupola rising from the walls. 



28 



EASTERN LIFE. 



chose to see. Between this countess and the eunuch, there was more 
religious demonstration on board than we had been accustomed to see 
in such places. 

Till 3 p. M., there was little variety in the scenery. I was most 
struck with the singular coloring ; — the diversity of browns. There 
was the turbid river, of vast width, rolling between earthy banks ; and 
on these banks w^ere mud villages, with their conical pigeon-houses. 
The minarets and Sheikhs' tombs were fawn-colored and white ; and 
the only variety from these shades of the same color was in the scanty 
herbage, which was so coarse as to be almost of no color at all. But 
the distinctness of outline, the glow of the brown, and the vividness of 
light and shade, were truly a feast to the eye. At 3 o'clock, when ap- 
proaching Werdan, we saw large spreading acacias growing out of the 
dusty soil ; and palms were clustered thickly about the town ; and at 
last we had something beyond the banks to look at ; — a sandy ridge 
which extends from Tunis to the Nile. When we had passed Wer- 
dan, about 4 p. M., Mr. E. came to me with a mysterious countenance, 
and asked me if I should like to be the first to see the Pyramids. We 
stole past the groups of careless talkers, and went to the bows of the 
boat, where I w^as mounted on boxes and coops, and shown where to 
look. In a minute I saw them, emerging from behind a sand hill. 
They were very small ; for we were still tvventy-five miles from Cairo ; 
but there could be no doubt about them for a moment ; so sharp and 
clear were the light and shadow on the two sides we saw. I had been 
assured that I should be disappointed in the first sight of the Pyramids; 
and I had maintained that I could not be disappointed, as of all the 
wonders of the world, this is the most literal, and, to a dweller among 
mountains, like myself, the least imposing. I now found both my in- 
formant and myself mistaken. So far from being disappointed, I was 
filled with surprise and awe : and so far was I from having antici- 
pated what I saw, that I felt as if I had never before looked upon any- 
thing so new as those clear and vivid masses, with their sharp blue 
shadows, standing firm and alone on their expanse of sand. In a few 
minutes, they appeared to grow wonderfully larger ; and they looked 
lustrous and most imposing in the evening light. This impression of 
the Pyramids was never fully renewed. I admired them every even- 
ing from my window at Cairo ; and I took the surest means of con- 
vincing myself of their vastness, by going to the top of the largest ; but 
this first view of them was the most moving : and I cannot think of it 
now without emotion. 

Between this time and sunset, the most remarkable thing was the 
infinity of birds. I saw a few pelicans and many cormorants ; but the 
flocks — I might say the shoals — of wild ducks and geese which peo- 
pled the air, gave me a stronger impression of the wildness of the 
country, and the foreign character of the scenery, than anything I had 
yet seen. We passed by moonlight the spot where the great experi- 
ment of the Barrage is to be tried ; and here we could distinguish the 
point of the Delta, and the junction ot' the other branch, and knew 
when we had issued upon the single Nile. Soon after, the groves of 



CAIRO. 



29 



Shoobra — the Pasha's country palace — rose against the sky, on the 
eastern shore. Then there were gUmmerings of white houses ; and 
then rows of buildings and lights which told of our approach to Boo- 
lak, the port of Cairo. The palace of Ismael Pasha, who was burnt 
at Sennaar twenty-nine years ago, rose above the bank ; and then there 
was a blaze of cressets, which showed where we were to land. A 
carriage from the Hotel d'Orient awaited our party ; and we were 
driven, under an avenue of acacias, a mile or two to Cairo. By the 
way, we saw some truly Arabian dwellings by torchlight, which made 
us long for the morrow. 

In the morning I found that my windows looked out upon the Ez- 
bekeeyeh — the great Square — all trees and shade, this sunny morning ; 
and over the tree tops rose the Pyramids, apparently only a stone's 
throw off, though in fact more than ten miles distant. A low canal 
runs round the Square, just under my windows ; and on its bank was 
a striking group — a patriarchal picture ; — an Arab leading down his 
flock of goats to water. The sides of this canal were grass-grown ; 
and the interior of the Square, the area of 400,000 feet within the belt 
of trees, was green with shrubs, field-crops, and gardens. While I 
was gazing upon this new scene, and amusing myself with the ap- 
pearance and gestures of the people whe went by on foot, on asses, or 
on camels, Mr. Y. and Mr. E. were gone to Boolak, to see about a 
boat which we had heard of as likely to suit us for our voyage up to 
the First Cataract. At breakfast they brought us the news that they 
had engaged the boat, with its crew. We afterwards mounted don- 
keys, and rode off to Boolak to examine this boat, which has the repu- 
tation of being the best on the Nile. 

As our thoughts and our time were much engaged with the antici- 
pation of our voyage and with preparations for it, so that we did not 
now see much of Cairo, or open our minds thoroughly to what we did 
see, I shall say nothing here of the great Arabian city. With me it 
stands last in interest, as latest in time, of the sights of Egypt: and any 
account that I can give of it will be the more truthful for coming in its 
right place, — after the cities of the ancient world. 

We found on board our dahabieh the old American merchant to 
whom it belongs, — his tawny finger graced by a magnificent diamond 
ring. The Rais, — the captain of the crew, who is responsible for the 
safety of the boat, — was in waiting to take directions from us about 
some additional accommodation. We liked this man from first to last. 
His countenance struck me this morning as being fine, notwithstanding 
a slight squint. It had much of the pathetic expression of the Arab 
countenance, with strong sense, and, on occasion, abundance of fire. 
His caution about injuring the boat, made him sometimes appear indo- 
lent when we wanted to push on ; and he, seeming to indulge us, would 
yet moor within half-an-hour : but he worked well with the crew at 
times, — taking an oar, and handling the ropes himself. For many an 
hour of our voyage, he sat on the gunwale, singing to the rowers some 
mournful song, to which they replied in a chorus yet more mournful. 
The manners of this man were as full of courtesy and kindness as we 



30 



EASTERN LIFE. 



almost invariably found the manners of the Arabs to be; and there was 
even an unusual degree of the oriental dignity in his bearing. 

The boat was so clean that there was no occasion for us to wait for 
the usual process of sinking, — to drown vermin. The few additions 
and alterations necessary could easily be made w'hile we were buying 
our stores: and, in fact, we were ofi in five days. Our deck afforded 
a walk of twelve paces, when the crew were not rowing: and this 
spacious deck was covered with an awning. The first cabin was quite 
a saloon. It had a continuous row of windows, and a deewan along 
each side; on the broadest of which the gentlemen's beds were made 
up at night. We had bookshelves put up here; and there was ample 
closet accommodation, — for medicines, pickles, tools, paper and string, 
&c. In the inner cabin, the narrow deewans were widened by a sort 
of shelf put up to contain the bedding of INIrs. Y. and myself. The 
floor and ceiling were painted blue, orange and green, and the many 
windows had Venetian blinds. It was a truly comfortable chamber, 
which we inhabited with perfect satisfaction for many weeks. 

The bargain made, the gentlemen and Alee were much engaged 
every day in laying in stores. Matresses and spices, wine and 
crockery, maccaroni, camp-stools, biscuits, candles, a table, fruit, 
sponges, saucepans, soap, cordage, tea and sugar; — here are a few 
items of the multitude tliat had to be attended to. Every morning, the 
gentlemen were off early to tiie stores; and the time they gave to sight- 
seeing with ]Mrs. Y. and me was accepted as a great favor. Active as 
w^e thought them, it was an amusement to us to see that it was possible 
to be more active still. A young Scotchman who was at our hotel, 
with a sister and two friends, was always before us, however early we 
might be, and obtained the first choice of everything, from the dahabieh 
herself to the smallest article she carried. And all this activity and 
shrewdness lay under a pale young face, a quiet voice and languid 
manner, betokening poor health, if not low spirits. On the night of 
our arrival at Cairo, we did not go to bed till past midnight ; and our 
gendemen were out at five to see about the dahabieh, — knowing that 
the competition for boats was then very keen: but the Scotchman had 
been out at four, and had seen and declined the dahabieh before my 
friends reached Boolak. Whenever we bought any article, we found 
that our Scotch neighbor had had his choice before us. We seldom went 
into the store where we obtained almost everything but he was sitting 
there, tasting wines or preserves, or handling utensils, as if he had been 
a furniture-monger all his life. It was presently apparent that he was 
bent on getting olf before us, — on obtaining a good start up the river; 
and it is not to be denied that this roused the combativeness of some 
of our party ; and that our preparations were pressed forward with 
some view to the question whether the English or Scotch party would 
get the start. The expectation was that the Scotch would sail on 
Tuesday, December 1st, and an American party on the same day; 
while we could not get off till the AYednesday morning, though taking 
up our abode on board our dahabieh on the Tuesday evening. We 
were advised to do this, that we might not depart unfurnished witli 



PREPARATIONS FOR THE NILE VOYAGE. 31 

some essential but forgotten article, as was the case with a party who 
set sail with a fair wind, and were carried exulting up the river for 
twenty miles, when they found they had no candles. To our surprise, 
the Scotch party appeared at the late dinner on Tuesday ; and when 
we accompanied the ladies to their rooms afterwards, to see the shady 
bonnets they were making for tropical wear, we found they were 
waiting for the washerman, who had disappointed them of their clothes. 
So we left the hotel before them. 

It was bright moonlight when we set off for Boolak, — a curious 
cavalcade. Of course, we were on donkeys ; as were such of our 
goods as had not been removed before. The donkey boys carried — 
one, my desk, another, the arrow-root, and a third, the chocolate. It 
was a merry ride, under the acacias, whose flickering shadows were 
cast across the road by the clear moon. The tea-things were set in 
the cabin when we arrived. There was less confusion on board than 
might have been expected ; and we had a comfortable night. 

Our crew consisted of fourteen, including the Rais. Of these, five 
were Nubians, and the rest Cairenes. We had besides, our dragoman. 
Alee, and his assistant, Hasan ; and the cook, — a grotesque and amus- 
ing personage. The hire of the boat and crew, who provided them- 
selves with food, was 40/. per month. Times are changed since some 
acquaintance of ours went up to the Second Cataract, two years since, 
for 12/. Those of our crew who afforded us the most amusement 
were some of the Cairenes : but we liked best the quiet and peaceable 
Nubians. When we set off the whole crew messed together, sitting 
on their haunches in a circle round their pan of lentile or dourrha pot- 
tage. But before we returned, the Cairenes had all quarreled; and 
the five Nubians were eating together, as amicably as ever, while each 
Cairene was picking his bread by himself. 

When I came on deck in the morning, I found that we were not to 
start till the afternoon, and that we must put up with extraordinary 
confusion till then. There was abundant employment for us all, how- 
ever, and after breakfast, the gentlemen went up to the city, to make 
some more purchases, and Mrs. Y. and I sat on deck, under the awn- 
ing, making a curtain for the cabin, a table-cover, &c. The doings of 
the Arabs on shore were amusing and interesting enough. Among 
others, I saw a blind man bringing, as he would say, his donkey down 
to drink ; but the donkey led the man. The creature went carefully 
down the steep and rough bank, and the man followed, keeping his 
hands on its hind quarters, and scarcely making a false step. The 
Scotch party came down, in the course of the morning, and presently 
put off, and went full sail up the river. The American boat was, I 
believe, already gone. Soon after three, Alee announced that the last 
crate of fowls was on board ; the signal was given, and away we went. 



32 



EASTERN LIFE. 



CHAPTER III. 

NILE INCIDEXTS.— CREW.— BIRDS.— FACE OF THE COUNTRY.— THE 
HEAVENS.— TOWNS AND SHORES, BETWEEN CAIRO AND ASYOOT. 

As we swept np the broad river, we passed some fine houses, shel- 
tered by dark masses of acacias ; and presenting, to the river, spacious 
overhanging balconies, and picturesque water-wheels. My friends 
said this was very like the Bosphorus. Presently, Cairo arose in the 
distance, backed by the white citadel and the yellow range of the Mo- 
kuttam hills, with their finely broken outline. On the western shore 
was El Geezeh, with its long range of hospital buildings, relieved by 
massy foliage, behind which towered the Pyramids ; and further on 
were more Pyramids, lessening in the distance. We were aground 
once and again within an hour ; and while we were at dinner, we drove 
upon a shoal with a great shock. This was not the way to overtake 
the Scotch party, whose boat could not be supposed ever to get aground; 
and our Rais was informed that if he struck again, he should be basti- 
nadoed. The wind was too fresh to allow of our dining on deck ; and 
the sun was declining behind the palms when we went down to the 
cabin. When we came up again, the yellow glow remained, while the 
rich foliage of the eastern shore was quivering in the moonlight. Jupi- 
ter was as lustrous as if there had been no moon. The breeze now 
fell, now rose ; and the crew set up their wild music, — the pipe and 
drum, with intervals of mournful song. 

I do not know whether all the primitive music in the world is in the 
minor key : but I have been struck by its prevalence among all the 
savage, or half-civilized, or uneducated people whom I have known. 
The music of Nature is all in the minor key ; — the melodies of the 
winds, the sea, the waterfall, birds, and the echoes of bleating flocks 
among the hills : and human song seems to follow this lead, till men 
are introduced at once into the new world of harmony and the know- 
ledge of music in the major key. Our crew sang always in unison, 
and had evidently no conception of harmony. 1 often wished that I 
could sing loud enough to catch their ear, amidst their clamor, that I 
might see whether my second would strike them with any sense of 
harmony : but their overpowering noise made any such attempt hope- 
less. We are accustomed to find or make the music which we call 
spirit-stirring in the major key: but their spirit-stirring music, set up 
to encourage them at the oar, is all of the same pathetic character as 
the most doleful, and only somewhat louder and more rapid. They 
kept time so admirably, and were so prone to singing, that Ave longed 
to teach them to substitute harmony for noise, and meaning for mere 
sensation. The nonsense that they sing is provoking. AVhen we had 
grown sad under the mournful swell of their song, and were ready for 



THE NILE. 



33 



any wildness of sentiment, it was vexatious to learn from Alee what 
they were singing about. Once it was " Put the saddle on the horse. 
Put the saddle on the horse." And this was all. Sometimes it was 
" Pull harder. Pull harder." This was expanded into a curious 
piece of Job's comfort, one evening when they had been rowing all 
day, and must have been very weary. " Pull hard : pull harder. The 
nearer you come to Alexandria, the harder you will have to pull. God 
give help !" Another song might be construed by some vigilant peo- 
ple near the court to have a political meaning. " We have seen the 
Algerine bird singing on the walls of Alexandria." Another was, 
" The bird in the tree sings better than we do. The bird comes down 
to the river to wash itself." The concluding song of the voyage was 
the best, as to meaning, though not as to music, — in which I must say 
I preferred the pathetic chaunt about the horse and saddle. As we 
were approaching Cairo on our return, they sang " This is nearly our 
last day on the river, and we shall soon be at the city. He who is 
tired of rowing may go ashore, and sit by the sakia in the shade." I 
may observe that if the dragoman appears unwilling to translate any 
song, it is as well not to press for it; for it is understood that many of 
their words are such as it would give European ears no pleasure to 
hear. 

The water-wagtails were very tame, we observed already. They 
ran about on the deck, close to our feet as we sat, and looked in at our 
cabin windows in the most friendly manner. Next morning, we began 
to acquire some notion of the multitude of birds we were to see in 
Egypt; a notion which, I think, could hardly be obtained anywhere 
else. On a spit of sand, I saw, when I came forth, a flock of pelicans 
which defied counting, while a flight, no less large, was hovering 
above. A heron was standing fishing on another point; clouds of 
pigeons rose above every group of dwellings and chimp of palms, and 
multitudes of geese occupied the air at various heights — now in strings 
which extended almost half across the sky, and now furling and un- 
furling their line like an immeasurable pennon. The birds of Egypt did 
not appear to us to be in great variety, or remarkable beauty; but from 
their multitude, and being seen in all their wildness, they were every- 
where a very interesting feature of the scenery. The ostrich I never 
saw, except tame, in a farmyard, though we had ostrich's eggs in Nu- 
bia. We came upon an eagle here and there, and always where we 
could most wish to see one. Sometimes, when in the temples, and 
most interested in the monuments, I caught myself thinking of home, 
and traced the association to the sparrows which were chirping over- 
head. I found swallows' nests in these temples, now and then, in a 
chink of the wall, or a recess of roof or niche. A devout soul of an 
old Egyptian, returning from its probation of three thousand years, 
would see that "the sparrow had found a house, and the swallow a 
nest for herself, where she might lay her young;" even the altars of 
the Lord God, so sacred once to the most imposing worship the world 
ever saw. Vultures are not uncommon. 1 used to see them some- 
times during my early walk on shore, busy about the skull of some 
3 



34 



EASTERN LIFE. 



dead horse or other carcass. The crested wood-pecker was often a 
pretty object among the mournful piles of ruins at Thebes or else- 
where, hopping about so spruce and gay ! Where the Arabian hills 
approached the river, or the shores presented perpendicular rocks, 
long rows of cormorants sat perched before their holes, as still and 
staid as so many hermits in contemplation. On every islet and jutting 
point were flocks of pelicans, whose plumage looked snow-white when 
set oft by a foil of black geese; and now and then, a single bird of this 
tribe might be seen in the early morning, balancing itself on the little 
billows, and turning its head about in the coyest manner, to prevent its 
long beak touching the water. The ibis is elegant in form, and most 
delicate in plumage, as every one knows who has stroked its snowy 
feathers. It looked best when standing under the banks, or wading 
among the reeds in a cove. It looked most strange and out of place 
when perched on the back of a buffalo, as I occasionally saw it. We 
once saw five buffalo in one field, with each a delicate white ibis 
perched on its back. And from the nose of one of these buffalo two 
little birds were at the same time picking insects, or something else that 
they relished. 

As to the birds which have such a mysterious connection with the 
sleeping crocodile, I can give no new information about them. I can 
only say that on almost every occasion of our seeing a crocodile, two 
or three of these birds were standing beside him; and that I never saw 
them fly away till he had moved. It is believed in the country that 
these birds relieve the crocodile of the little leeches which infest his 
throat, and that they keep watch while he sleeps on the sand and give 
him warning to escape on the approach of danger. What the crocodile 
does for the birds in return, we never heard. As for the pigeons, they 
abound beyond the conception of any traveler who has not seen the 
pigeon flights of the United States. They do not here, as there, dark- 
en the air in an occasional process of migration, breaking down young 
trees on which they alight, and lying in heaps under the attack of a 
party of sportsmen, but they flourish everywhere as the most prolific 
of birds may do under the especial protection of man. The best idea 
that a stranger can form of their multitude is by supposing such a bird 
population as that of the doves of Venice inhabiting the whole land of 
Egypt! The houses of the villages throughout Egypt are surmounted 
by a sort of batdements built for the pigeons, and supplied with fringes 
of boughs, inserted, in several rows to each house, for the birds to rest 
on. The chief object is the dung, which is required for manure for 
the garden, and for other purposes; but it is a mistake to say that the 
inhabitants do not eat them. They are taken for food, but not to such 
an extent as to interfere with the necessary supply of dung. One of 
our party occasionally shot a few wild ones, near the villages, and he 
met with no hinderance. But it was otherwise with our Scotch friend. 
Though he had asked leave, and believed he had obtained it, to let fly 
upon the pigeons in a village, the inhabitants rose upon him, and his 
Rais had some difficulty in securing his safe return to his boat. He 
did it by a device which his employer was shocked to hear of after- 



THE NILE. 



35 



wards. He declared our friend to be the Pasha's dentist! To form a 
notion of the importance of this functionary, it is necessary to remem- 
ber that the pasha's having a dentist is one of the most remarkable 
signs of our times. That a Mohammedan ruler should have permitted 
his beard to be handled is a token of change more extraordinary than 
the adoption of the Frank dress in Turkey, or the introduction of wine 
at Mohammedan dinners; and the man who was permitted by the Pa- 
sha to touch his beard must be regarded throughout the country as a 
person inestimably powerful with his Highness. Such a personage 
was our Scotch friend compelled to appear for some way up the river, 
and very reluctant he was to bear the dignity to which his assent had 
not been asked. A pretty bird, of the kingfisher kind apparently, 
colored black, gray and tawny, was flitting about on the shore when I 
took my first walk on shore this morning. And I think I have now 
mentioned nearly all the birds we observed in the course of our voyage. 

Our object, like that of Egyptian travelers generally, was to sail up 
the river as fast as the wind would carry us, seeing by the way only 
as much as would not interfere with the progress of the boat. It was 
the season when the north wind prevailed ; and this advantage was not 
to be trifled with in a voyage of a thousand miles, certain as we were 
of the help of the current to bring us back. We were therefore to 
explore no pyramids or temples on our way up ; and to see only so 
much of the country as we could get a glimpse of on occasion of the 
failure of the wind, or other accidental delays. To this there was no 
objection in our minds ; for we found at once that in going up the Nile 
in any manner we should meet with as much novelty and interest as 
we could bear. The face of the country was enough at one time. To 
have explored its monuments immediately would have been too much. 
Moreover, there was a great advantage in going up quickly while the 
river v/as yet high enough to afl'ord some view of the country. In 
returning, we found such a change produced by the sinking of the 
waters only a few feet, that we felt that travelers going up late in the 
season can hardly be said to have seen the country from the river. At 
all times, the view of the interior from the Nile must be very imiper- 
fect, and quite insufficient to justify any decision against the beauty of 
the great valley. This arises from the singular structure of the coun- 
try. Everywhere else, where a river flows through the centre of a val- 
ley, the land either slopes from the base of the hills down to the river, 
or it is level. In Egypt, on the contrary, the land rises from the 
mountains up to the banks of the Nile: and where, as usually happens, 
the banks are higher than the eye of the spectator on the deck of his 
boat, all view of the interior, as far as the hills, is precluded. He 
sees nothing but the towns, villages, and palm-groves on the banks, and 
the mountains on the horizon. My attention had been directed upon 
this point before I went by the complaints of some readers of Eastern 
travels that, after all their reading, they knew no more what the Egyp- 
tian valley looked like than if it had never been visited. As this fail- 
ure of description appeared to regard Egypt alone, there must be some 
peculiar cause for it : and thus we found it. The remedy was, of 



36 



EASTERN LIFE. 



course, to go ashore as often as possible, and to mount every practica- 
ble eminence. I found tiiis so delightful, and every wide view that I 
obtained included so much that was wonderful and beautiful, that mount- 
ing eminences became an earnest pursuit with me. I carried compass 
and note-book, and noted down what I saw, from eminence to emi- 
nence, along the wliole valley, from Cairo to the Second Cataract. 
Sometimes I looked abroad from the top of a pylon ; sometimes from 
a rock on the banks; sometimes from a sandy ridge of the desert; 
sometimes from a green declivity of the interior ; once from a mountain 
above Thebes, and once from the summit of the Great Pyramid. My 
conclusion is that I differ entirely from those who complain of the 
sameness of the aspect of the country. The constituent features of 
the landscape may be more limited in number than in other tracts of 
country of a thousand miles : but they are so grand and so beautiful, 
so strange, and brought together in such endless diversity, that I cannot 
conceive that any one who has really seen the country can complain 
of its monotony. Each panoramic survey that I made is now as dis- 
tinct in my mind as the images I retain of Niagara, lona, Salisbury 
Plain, the Valais, and Lake Garda. 

Our opportunities of going ashore were not few, even at the beginning 
of our voyage, when the wind was fair, and we sailed on, almost continu- 
ously, for three days. In the early mornings, one of the crew was sent 
for milk, and he was to be taken up at a point further on. And if, towards 
night, the Rais feared a rock, or a windy reach ahead, he would moor at 
sunset ; and this allowed us nearly an hour before it was dark enough for 
us to mind the howling jackals. When the wind ceased to befriend us, 
the crew had to track almost all day, following the bends of the river ; 
and we could either follow these also, or strike across the fields to some 
distant point of the bank. And when on board, there was so much to 
be seen on the ordinary banks that I was rarely in the cabin. Before 
breakfast, I was walking on the deck. After breakfast, I was sewing, 
reading, or writing, or idling on deck, under the shade of the awning. 
After dinner we all came out eagerly, to enjoy the last hour of sun- 
shine, and the glories of the sunset and the after-glow, and the rising 
of the moon and constellations. And sorry was I every night when 
it was ten o'clock, and I must go under a lower roof than that of the 
dazzling heavens. All these hours of our first days had their ample 
amusement from what we saw on the banks alone, till we could pene- 
trate further. 

There were the pranks of the crew, whose oddities were unceasing, 
and particularly rich in the early morning. Then it was that they 
mimicked whatever they saw us do, — sometimes for the joke, but as 
often with the utmost seriousness. I sometimes thought that they 
took certain of our practices for religious exercises. The solemnity 
with which one or another tried to walk the deck rapidly, to dance, 
and to skip the rope, looked like this. The poor fellow who laid 
hands on the skipping-rope paid (he probably thought) the penalty of 
his impiety. At the first attempt, down he came, flat on his face. If 
Mr. E. looked through his glass, some Ibraheem or Mustafa would 



THE NILE. 



37 



snatch up an oar for a telescope, and see marvellous things in the plain. 
If, in the heat, either of the gentlemen nodded over his book, half the 
crew would go to sleep instantly, peeping every moment to see the 
efTect. — Then, there were the veiled women coming down to the river 
to fill their water-pots. Or the men, at prayer-time, performing their 
ablutions and prostrations. And there was the pretty sight of the pre- 
paration of the drying banks for the new crop ; — the hoeing with the 
short, heavy antique hoe. And the harrow, drawn by a camel, would 
appear on the ridge of the bank. And the working of the Shadoofs* 
was perpetual, and always interesting. Those who know what the 
shadoof is like, may conceive the picture of its working :--the almost 
naked Arabs, — usually in pairs, — lowering and raising their skin 
buckets by the long lever overhead, and emptying them into the trough 
beside them, with an observance of time as regular as in their sing- 
ing. Where the bank is high, there is another pair of shadoofs at 
work above and behind: and sometimes a third, before the water can 
be sent flowing in its little channels through the fields. — Then, there 
were the endless manoeuvres of innumerable birds, about the islets 
and rocks : and a buffalo, here and there, swimming from bank to 
bank, and finding it, at last, no easy matter to gain the land. — Then, 
there was the ferryboat, with its ragged sail, and its motley freight of 
turbaned men, veiled women, naked children, brown sheep, frightened 
asses, and imperturbable buffalo. — Then, there were the long palisades 
of sugar-canes edging the banks; or the steep slopes, all soft and 
bright with the springing wheat or the bristling lupins. Then, there 
were the villages, with their somewhat pyramidal houses, their clouds 
of pigeons, and their shelter of palms : or, here and there, a town, with 
its minarets rising out of its cincture of acacia. And it was not long 
before we found our sight sharpened to discern holes in the rocks, far 
or near: — holes so squared at the entrance as to hint of sculpture or 
painting within. — And then, as the evening drew on, there was the 
sinking of the sun, and the coming out of the colors which had been 
discharged by the glare in the middle of the day. The vast and dreary 
and hazy Arabian desert became yellow, melting into the purple hills ; 
the muddy waters took a lilac hue ; and the shadows of the sharp-cut 
banks were as blue as the central sky. As for the moon, we could, 
for the first time in our lives, see her the first night ; — the slenderest 
thread of light, of cup-like form, visible for a few minutes after sun- 
set ; the old moon being so clearly marked as to be seen by itself after 
the radiant rim was gone. I have seen it behind a palm, or resting on 
the ridge of a mountain like a copper ball. And when the fuller moon 
came up from the east, and I, forgetting the clearness of the sky, have 
been struck by the sudden dimness, and have looked up to watch her 
passing behind a cloud, it was delicious to see, instead of any cloud, 
the fronds of a palm waving upon her disk. One night, I saw an ap- 
pearance perfectly new to me. No object was perceptible on the high 
black eastern bank, above and behind which hung the moon: but in 



* Pole and bucket, for raising water. 



38 



EASTERN LIFE. 



her golden track on the dimpled waters were the shadows of palms, 
single and in clusters, passing over swiftly, — "authentic tidings of in- 
visible things." And then, there was the rising of Orion. I have said 
that the constellations were less conspicuous than at home, from the 
universal brilliancy of the sky : but Orion shone forth, night by night, 
till the punctual and radiant apparition became almost oppressive to 
the watching sense. I came at last to know his first star as it rose 
clear out of the bank. He never issued whole from a haze on the 
horizon, as at home. As each star rose, it dropped a duplicate upon 
the surface of the still waters : and on a calm night, it was hard to say 
which Orion was the brightest. — And how different was the wind from 
our cloud-laden winds in England ! Except that it carried us on, I did 
not like wind in Egypt. The palms, bowed from their graceful height, 
and bent all one way, are as ugly as trees can be : and the dust flies in 
clouds, looking like smoke or haze on land, and settling on our faces, 
even in the middle of the stream. Though called sand, it is, for the 
most part, mere dust from the limestone ranges, forming mud when 
moistened. The wind served, however, to show us a sand-pillar now 
and then, like a column of smoke moving slowly along the ground. 
On this second day of our voyage, when we were approaching Beni- 
sooeef, the wind made ugly what on a calm evening would have been 
lovely. A solitary house, in the midst of a slip of alluvial land, all 
blown upon with dust, looked to us the most dreary of dwellings. 
But the latteen sails on the river were a pretty feature, — one or two at 
a time, winding in and out, with the bends of the stream. We saw 
one before us near Benisooeef, this day. It proved to be our Scotch 
friends. Our boat beat his in a strong wind ; and we swept past in 
good style, — the gentlemen uncapping and bowing ; the ladies waving 
their handkerchiefs. I had no idea that the racing spirit had entered 
into them, till one of the ladies told me, the next time we met, " We 
were so mortified when you passed us !" 

Benisooeef is about eighty miles from Cairo : a good progress for 
twenty-three hours ! — It is the largest town in Upper Egypt: but it 
does not look very imposing from the river. Two or three minarets 
rise from it ; and there is one rather good-looking house, which the 
Pasha inhabits when he comes. Its aspect was pretty as we looked 
back to it from the south. 

The wind carried us on towards the rocky region where our careful 
Rais would retard our progress by night, though we had a glorious 
lamp in the moon, the whole night through. We had a rocky shore 
to the east this afternoon, — the Arabian mountains approaching the 
river : and in the early morning, we passed the precipitous clifis, on 
whose flat summit stands the Coptic convent of "Our Lady Mary the 
Virgin." The forms of these limestone clifl^s are most fantastic; and 
fantastic was the whole scene ; — the long rows of cormorants in front 
of their holes, — a sort of burlesque upon the monks in their cells 
above; the unconnected flights of steps here and there on the rocks; 
the women and naked chikh-en on the ridge, giving notice to the beg- 
ging monks of our approach ! and the monks themselves, leaping and 



THE NILE. 



39 



racing down the precipice, and then, two of them, racing through the 
water, struggling with the strong current, to board us for baksheesh. 
The one who succeeded was quite satisfied, in the midst of his panting 
and exhaustion, with five paras* and an empty bottle. He waited a 
little, till we had gone about a mile, in order to have the help of the 
current, and then swam off to his convent. 

We passed the pretty town of Minyeh about noon ; and then entered 
upon sugar districts so rich as to make one speculate whether this 
might not be, some day, one of the great sugar-producing regions of 
the world. The soil is very rich, and irrigated by perpetually recur- 
ring shadoofs : and the crops of canes on the flats between the rocks 
and the river were very fine, and extending onwards for some days 
from this time. The tall chimneys of the Rauda sugar manufactory 
stood up above the wood on a promontory, looking very strange amidst 
such a scene. — On our return, we visited the sugar manufactory at 
Hou, and learned something of the condition and prospects of the 
manufacture. The Hou establishment belongs to Ibraheem Pasha, 
whom we met there at seven in the morning. It is quite new ; and a 
crowd of little children were employed in the unfinished part, carrying 
mortar in earthen bowls for Id. per day. The engineers are French, 
and the engine, one hundred-and-twenty horse power, was made at 
Paris. The managers cannot have here the charcoal they use in 
France for clarifying the juice. From the scarcity of wood, charcoal is 
too dear ; and burnt bones are employed instead, — answering the pur- 
pose very well. We saw the whole process, which seemed cleverly 
managed ; and the gentlemen pronounced the quality of the sugar good. 
An Englishman employed there said, however, that the canes were 
inferior to those of the West Indies, for want of rain. There were a 
hundred people at work in this establishment ; their wages being, be- 
sides food, a piastre and a quarter (nearly 3c/.) per day. If, however, 
the payment of wages is managed here as I shall have to show it is 
usually done in Egypt, the receipts of the work-people must be con- 
sidered much less than this. We heard so much oi the complaints of 
the people at having to buy, under compulsion, coarse and dear sugar, 
that it is clear that much improvement in management must take place 
before Egypt can compete with other sugar-producing countries: but 
still, what we saw of the extensive growth of the cane, and the quality 
of the produce, under great disadvantages, made us look upon this as 
one of the great future industrial resources of Egypt. 

The next morning, we could still distinguish the tall chimnej^ of 
Rauda. We had been at anchor under a bank all night, the Rais being 
in fear of a rock a-head. The minarets of Melawee were on a flat on 
the western bank, some way before us: and between us and them, lay 
the caves of Benee Hasan; — those wonderful repositories of monu- 
mental records of the old Egyptians, which we were to explore on our 
return, but must now pass by, as if they were no more than what they 
looked, — mere apertures in the face of the mountains. 



* Five paras are a farthing and one-fifth. 



40 



EASTERN LIFE. 



The crew were tracking this morning, for the first time ; — stepping 
along at a funeral pace, and slipping off, one by one, to light a pipe 
where four or five smokers were puffing in a circle, among the sugar- 
canes. Our crew never appeared tired with their tracking; but in the 
mornings they were slow; and the man who was sent for milk moved 
very lazily, whether the one chosen were the briskest or the quietest 
of the company. The cook was rather too deliberate about breakfast, 
and Alee himself was not a good riser. It was their winter; and cold 
makes the Arabs torpid instead of brisk. Presendy, we had to cross 
to the more level bank ; and then we first saw our people row. It was 
very ridiculous. They sang at the top of their voices, some of them 
throwing their heads back, shutting their eyes, and shaking their heads 
at every quaver, most pathetically, — dipping their oars the while as if 
they were skimming milk, and all out of time with their singing, and 
with one another, while their musical time was perfectly good. — The 
wind presently freshened, and we stood away. It was fitful all day, 
but blew steadily when the moon rose. Just then, however, the Rais 
took fright about passing the next point at night, and we moored, 
beside four other boats, in the deep shadow of a palm-grove. On these 
occasions, two men of the neighborhood and a dog are appointed to 
guard each boat that moors to the bank. The boat pays three pias- 
tres ;* and if anything is lost, complaint is made to the Governor of the 
district, whose business it is to recover the property, and punish the 
guards. 

As we approached Manfaloot, we could perceive how strangely old 
Nile has gone out of his course, as if for the purpose of destroying the 
town. The bed of the river was once evidently at the base of the hills, — 
those orange hills with their blue shadows, — where rows of black holes 
show ancient catacombs. So strong a reflected light shone into one of 
these caves, that we could see something of its interior. We called it 
a perfect smuggler's cave, with packages of goods within, and a dog on 
guard at the entrance. When we looked at it with the glass, however, 
we were grave in a moment. We saw that the back and roof were 
sculptured. 

Manfaloot is still a large place, sadly washed down, — sliced away — 
by the encroachment of the river. Many houses were carried away 
last year; and some which looked as if cut straight through their inte- 
rior, have probably followed by this time. 

The heat was now great in the middle of the day; and the glare 
oppressive to people who were on the look-out for crocodiles; — as we 
were after passing Manfaloot. We were glad of awning, goggles, fans, 
and oranges. But the crew were all alive,' — kicking dust over one 
another on shore, leaping high in the water, to make a splash, and per- 
petrating all manner of practical jokes. We do not agree with travel- 
ers who declare it necessary to treat these people with coldness and 
severity, — to repel and beat them. We treated them as children; and 
this answered perfectly well. I do not remember that any one of them 



* About Id. 



THE NILE. 



41 



was ever punished on our account: certainly never by our desire. 
They were always manageable by kindness and mirth. They served 
us with heartiness, and did us no injury whatever. The only point 
we could not carry was inducing them to sing softly. No threats of 
refusing baksheesh availed. Mr. E. obtained some success on a sin- 
gle occasion by chucking dry bread into the throats of one or two who 
were quavering with shut eyes, and wide-open jaws. This joke 
availed for the moment, more than any threats ; but the truth is, they 
can no more refrain from the full use of their lungs when at work, than 
from that of eyes and ears. 

On the evening of Monday the 7th, we approached Asyoot : and 
beautiful was the approach. After arriving in bright sunshine, ap- 
parently at its very skirts, and counting its fourteen minarets, and ad- 
miring its position at the foot of what seemed the last hill of the range, 
we were carried far away by a bend of the river; — saw boats, and 
groups of people and cattle, and noble palm and acacia woods on the 
opposite bank, and did not anchor till starlight under El Hamra, the 
village which is the port of Asyoot. 

We were sorry to lose the advantage of the fair wind which had 
sprung up : but it was here that the crew had to bake their bread for 
the remainder of the voyage up. We had no reason to regret our de- 
tention, occasioning, as it did, our first real view of the interior of the 
country — Asyoot is a post town too; and we were glad of this last 
certain opportunity of writing home before going quite into the wilds. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ASYOOT.— OLD SITES.— SOME ELEMENTS OF EGYPTIAN THOUGHT.— 
FIRST CROCODILES.— SOOHADJ.—GIRGEH.—KENNEH. 

In the morning, our canvas was down, along the landward side of 
our boats ; so that the people on shore could not pry. It was plea- 
sant, however, to play the spy upon them. There were many don- 
keys, and gay groups of their owners, just above the boat. On the 
one hand, were a company of men washing clothes in the river under 
a picturesque old wall: and on the other, boat-builders diligently at 
work on the shore. The Arab artisans appear to work well. The 
hammers of these boat-builders were going all day ; and the tinman, 
shoemakers, and others whom I observed in the bazaars, appeared 
dexterous and industrious. 

Asyoot is the residence of the Governor of Upper Egypt. Selim 
Pasha held this office as we went up the river. While we were com- 
ing down, he was deposed ; — to the great regret of all whom we heard 
speak of it. He was so well thought of that there was every hope of 
his reinstatement. Selim Pasha is he who married his sister, and 
made the terrible discovery while at supper on his wedding-day, in his 
first interview with his bride. Both were Circassian slaves; and he 



42 



EASTERN LIFE. 



had been carried away before the birth of this sister. This adventure 
happened when the now gray-bearded man was young: but it invests 
him with interest still, in addition to that inspired by his high character. 
We passed his garden to-day, and thought it looked well, — the palace 
being embosomed among palms, acacias, and the yellow-flowering 
mimosa ; which last, when intermixed with other trees, gives a kind of 
autumnal tinge to masses of dark foliage. 

We were much struck by the causeway, which would be con- 
sidered a vast work in England. It extends from the river bank to 
the town, and thence on to the Djebel (mountain) with many limbs 
from this main trunk. In direct extent, I think it can hardly be less 
than two miles : but of this I am not sure. Its secondary object is to 
retain the Nile water after the inundation, — the water flowing in 
through sluices which can be easily closed. The land is divided by 
smaller embankments, within this large one, into compartments or 
basins, where the most vigorous crops of wheat, clover, and millet 
were flourishing when we rode by. The water stands not more than 
two feet deep at high Nile in the most elevated of these basins. Inside 
the causeway was the canal which yielded its earth to its neighbor. 
In this canal many pools remained ; and the seed was only just spring- 
ing in the dryest parts. In some places I saw shaken piers, and sluices 
where the unbaked brick seemed to have melted down in the water: 
but the new walls and bridges appeared to be solidly constructed. — 
On the banks of the causeway and canal on the south side of the town 
were flowering mimosas as large, we thought, as oaks of fifty years 
growth in England. The causeway aff'orded an admirable road; — 
high, broad and level. The efl'ect was strange of entering from such 
a road into such a town. 

The streets had, for the most part, blank walls, brown, and rarely 
perpendicular. Some sloped purposely, and some from the giving 
way of the mud bricks. Many were cracked from top to bottom. 
Jars were built in near the top of several of the houses, for the pigeons. 
The bazaars appeared well stocked, and the business going forward 
was brisk. I now began to feel the misery which every Frank woman 
has to endure in the provincial towns of the East, — the being stared at 
by all eyes. The staring was not rude or ofl'ensive; but it was enough 
to be very disagreeable ; at least, to one who knew, as I did, that the 
appearance of a woman with an uncovered face is an indecency in the 
eyes of the inhabitants. At Cairo, Jerusalem and Damascus, one feels 
nothing of this, and the staring is no more than we give to a Turk in 
the streets of London or Liverpool: but in the provincial towns there 
is an air of amazement in the people, mingled in some places with true 
Mohammedan hatred of the Christians, which it is hard to meet with 
composure. The gentlemen of my party, who did not care for their 
share as Christians, wondered at my uneasiness, and disapproved of 
it : but I could not help it : and though I never gave way to it so far as 
to omit seeing anything on account of it, I never got over it at all, and 
felt it throughout to be the greatest penalty of ray Eastern travel. Yet 
I would not advise any Englishwoman to alter her dress or ways. She 



THE NILE. 



43 



can never, in a mere passage through an Eastern country, make her- 
self look like an Eastern woman ; and an unsupported assumption of 
any native custom will obtain for her no respect, but only make her 
appear ashamed of her own origin and ways. It is better to appear as 
she is, at any cost, than to attempt any degree of imposture. 

While we were waiting in the street to have our letters addressed in 
Arabic to the care of our consul at Cairo, I was, for the first time, struck 
by the number of blind and one-eyed people among those who surrounded 
us. Several young boys were one-eyed. As every body knows, this 
is less owing to disease than to dread of the government. 

It was strange to see, in the middle of a large town, vultures and 
other wild birds flying overhead. Among others, we saw an eagle, 
with a fish in its beak. — On our way to the caves in the Djebel, we 
met a funeral procession coming from the cemetery which lies between 
the town and the hills. The women were uttering a funeral howl worthy 
of Ireland. 

Our donkeys took us up a very steep path, nearly to the first range 
of caves. When we turned to overlook the landscape, what a view 
was there ! Mr. E., who has traveled much, said he had never seen 
so rich an expanse of country. I felt that I had seen something like 
it; but I could not, at the moment, remember where. It was certainly 
not in England : nor was it like the plains of Lombardy ; nor yet the 
unfenced expanse of cultivation that one sees in Germany. At last, 
it struck me that the resemblance was to an Illinois prairie. The 
rich green, spreading on either hand to the horizon, was prairie-like: 
but I never was, in Illinois, on a height which commanded one hun- 
dred miles of unbroken fertility, such as I now saw. And even in 
Illinois, in the finest season, there is never such an atmosphere as here 
gave positive brilliancy to every feature of. the scenery. A perfect 
level of the most vivid green extended north and south, till it was lost, 
not in haze, but from the mere inability of the eye to take in more: 
and through this wound away, from end to end, the full blue river. 
To the east, facing us, was the varied line of the Arabian hills, of a 
soft lilac tint. Seventeen villages, overshadowed by dark palms, were 
set down beside the river, or some little way into the land; and the 
plain was dotted with Arab husbandmen and their camels, here and 
there, as far as the eye could reach. Below us lay the town, with its 
brown, flat-roofed houses, relieved by the palms of its gardens, and 
two or three white cupolas, and fourteen minarets, of various heights 
and forms. Between it and us lay the causeway, enlivened by groups 
of Arabs, with their asses and camels, appearing and disappearing 
among the thickets of acacia which bordered it. Behind all lay the 
brilliant Djebel — with its glowing yellow lights and soft blue shadows. 
The whole scene looked to my eyes as gay as the rainbow, and as 
soft as the dawn. As I stood before the cave, I thought nothing could 
be more beautiful: but one section of it looked yet lovelier when seen 
through the lofty dark portal of an upper cave. But there is no con- 
veying such an impression as that. 

The caves are tombs ; some of them very ancient : so ancient, that 



44 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Abraham might have seen them, if he had come so far up the country. 
One race of those old times remains ; — the wolves. They were sacred 
here (Asyoot being the Lycopolis of the Greek times) ; their mummies 
are in many pits of the Djebel; and we saw the tracks of two in the 
dust of the caves. — The cave called Stabl d'Antar (Stable of the Ar- 
chitect) is lofty and large; — about seventy-two feet by thirty-six. Its 
ceiling is covered with patterns which we should call Greek borders 
anywhere else : but this ceiling is older than Greek art. The colors 
were chiefly blue, light gray and white. The colors of the hierogly- 
phic sculptures were red and blue, — the blue predominating. Two 
large figures flanked the portal; one much defaced; the other nearly 
perfect. 

I have since seen so much of the old Egyptian monuments, and 
they have become so familiarly interesting to me, that I look back 
with amusement to this hour of my first introduction to hieroglyphics 
and burial caves. I can scarcely believe it was only a few months 
a^o, — so youthful and ignorant seem now the feelings of mere curiosity 
and wonder with which I looked upon such painting and sculpture as 
afterwards became an intelligible language to me. I do not mean by 
this that I made any attempts to learn the old Egyptian language or 
its signs, — beyond a few of the commonest symbols. It is a kind of 
learning which requires the devotion of years ; and it is perhaps the 
only kind of learning of which a smattering can be of no use, and may 
probably be mischievous. — I remember being extremely surprised at 
the amount of sculptured inscriptions here, — little imagining what a mere 
sprinkling they were compared with what I should see in other places. 

In the succession of chambers within, and in the caves above, we 
found ranges of holes for the deposit of wolf mummies, and pits for 
the reception of coffins. The roofs of some of these caves had been 
supported by large square pillars, whose capitals remain attached, while 
the shafts are gone. This gave us a hint of the architectural adorn- 
ment of which we were to see so much hereafter in the tombs of Thebes 
and Benee Hasan. In the corner of a tomb lay a human skull, the 
bone of which was remarkably thick. Many bones and rags of mummy 
cloth lay scattered about. On the side of the hill below, we found a 
eg and foot. The instep was high by compression, but very long. 
There was also a skull, wrapped in mummy-cloth; not fragrant enough 
now, for all its antique spicery, to bring away. 

In the pits of these caves were the mummies lying when Cambyses 
was busy at Thebes, overthrowing the Colossus in the plain. And long 
after, came the upstart Greeks, relating here their personal adventures 
in India under their great Alexander, and calling the place Lycopolis, 
and putting a wolf on the reverse of their local coins. And, long after, 
came the Romans, and called Lycopolis the ancient name of the place, 
and laid the ashes of their dead in some of the caves. And long after, 
came the Christian anchorites, and lived a hermit life in these rock 
abodes. Among them was John of Lycopolis, who was consulted as 
an oracle by the Emperor Theodosius, as by many others, from his 
supposed knowledge of futurity. A favorite eunuch, Eutropius, was 



THE NILE. 



45 



sent hither from Constantinople, to learn from the hermit what would 
be the event of the civil war. I once considered the times of the Em- 
peror Theodosius old times. How modern do they appear on the 
hill-side at Asyoot! 

Our Scotch friends came up in the evening. As they were detained 
for the same reason as ourselves, we left them behind vi^hen we 
started the next afternoon. They gave us bows and waving of hand- 
kerchiefs, when the shouts of our crew gave notice of our departure ; 
and they no doubt hoped to see us again speedily. 

The next day, I told Mr. E. that a certain area we were coming to 
on the east bank must be the site of some old town. I judged this 
from the advantages evident at a glance. The space was nearly semi- 
circular, — its chord being the river-bank, and the rest curiously sur- 
rounded by three ranges of hills, whose extremities overlapped each 
other. There was thus obtained a river frontage, shelter from the sands 
of the desert behind, and a free ventilation through the passages of the 
hills. We referred to our books and map, and found that here stood 
Antaeopolis. From this time, it was one of my amusements to deter- 
mine, by observation of the site, where to look for ancient towns ; and 
the requisites were so clear, that I seldom found myself deceived. 

Diodorus Siculus tells us that Antae (supposed by Wilkinson to be 
probably the same with Ombte) had charge of the Ethiopian and 
Lybian parts of the kingdom of Osiris, while Osiris went abroad 
through the earth to benefit it with his gifts. Antae seems not to have 
been always in friendship with the house of Osiris, and was killed here 
by Hercules,* on behalf of Osiris ; but he was worshiped here, near 
the spot where the wife and son of Osiris avenged his death on his 
murderer Typho. The temple sacred to Antae, (or in the Greek, 
Antaeus,) parts of which were standing thirty years ago, was a rather 
modern affair, having been built about the time of the destruction of the 
Colossus of Rhodes. Ptolemy Philopater built it; and he was the 
Egyptian monarch who sent presents and sympathy to Rhodes, on 
occasion of the fall of the Colossus. Now nothing remains of the 
monuments but some heaps of stones : — nothing whatever that can be 
seen from the river. The traveler can only look upon hamlets of 
modern Arabs, and speculate on the probability of vast " treasures hid 
in the sand." 

If I were to have the choice of a fairy gift, it should be like none of 
the many things I fixed upon in my childhood, in readiness for such 
an occasion. It should be for a great winnowing fan, such as would, 
without injury to human eyes and lungs, blow away the sand which 
buries the monuments of Egypt. What a scene would be laid open 
then! One statue and sarcophagus, brought from Memphis, was buried 
one hundred and thirty feet below the mound surface. Who knows 
but that the greater part of old Memphis, and of other glorious cities, 
lies almost unharmed under the sand ! Who can say what armies of 
sphinxes, what sentinels of colossi, might start up on the banks of the 

* Quite a different personage from the Greek Hercules. 



46 



EASTERN LIFE. 



river, or come forth from the hill-sides of the interior, when the cloud of 
sand had been wafted away! The ruins which we now go to study, 
might then appear occupying only eminences, while below might be 
ranges of pylons, miles of colonnade, temples intact, and gods and god- 
desses safe in their sanctuaries. What quays along the Nile, and the 
banks of forgotten canals! What terraces, and flights of wide shallow 
steps ! What architectural stages might we not find for a thousand miles 
along the river, where now the orange sands lie so smooth and light as 
to show the track, — the clear foot-print — of every beetle that comes out 
to bask in the sun ! — But it is better as it is. If we could once blow 
away the sand, to discover the temples and palaces, we should next 
want to rend the rocks, to lay open the tombs; and heaven knows what 
this would set us wishing further. It is best as it is ; for the time has 
not come for the full discovery of the treasures of Egypt. It is best 
as it is. The sand is a fine means of preservation ; and the present 
inhabitants perpetuate enough of the names to serve for guidance when 
the day for exploration shall come. The minds of scholars are pre- 
paring for an intelligent interpretation of what a future age may find: 
and science, chemical and mechanical, will probably supply such 
means hereafter as we have not now, for treating and removing the 
sand, when its conservative office has lasted long enough. We are not 
worthy yet of this great unveiling : and the inhabitants are not, from 
their ignorance, trustworthy as spectators. It is better that the world 
should wait, if only care be taken that the memory of no site now 
known be lost. True as I feel it to be that we had better wait, I was 
for ever catching myself in a speculation, not only on the buried trea- 
sures of the mounds on shore, but on means for managing this obsti- 
nate sand. 

And yet, vexatious as is its presence in many a daily scene, this sand 
has a bright side to its character, — like everything else. Besides its 
great office of preserving unharmed for a future age the records of the 
oldest times known to man, the sand of the desert has, for many 
thousand years, shared equally with the Nile the function of determin- 
ing the character and the destiny of a whole people, who have again 
operated powerfully on the characters and destiny of other nations. 
Everywhere, the minds and fortunes of human races are mainly deter- 
mined by the characteristics of the soil on which they are born and 
reared. In our own small island, there are, as it were, three tribes of 
people, whose lives are much determined still, in spite of all modern 
facilities for intercourse, by the circumstance of their being born and 
reared on the mineral strip to the west, — the pastoral strip in the mid- 
dle, — or the eastern agricultural portion. The Welsh and Cornwall 
miners are as widely different from the Lincolnshire or Kentish hus- 
bandmen, and the Leicestershire herdsmen, as Englishmen can be from 
Englishmen. Not only their physical training is different; their in- 
tellectual faculties are differently exercised, and their moral ideas and 
habits vary accordingly. So it is in every country Avhere there is a 
diversity of geological formation : and nowhere is the original consti- 
tution of their earth so strikingly influential on the character of its 



THE NILE. 



47 



inhabitants as in Egypt. There everything depends — Ufe itself, and 
all that it includes — on the state of the unintermitting conflict between 
the Nile and the Desert. The world has seen many struggles ; but no 
other so pertinacious, so perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of 
these two great powers. The Nile, ever young, because perpetually 
renewing its youth, appears to the inexperienced eye to have no chance, 
with its stripling force, against the great old Goliath, the Desert, whose 
might has never relaxed, from the earliest days till now ; but the giant 
has not conquered yet. Now and then he has prevailed for a season ; 
and the tremblers whose destiny hung on the event, have cried out that 
all was over : but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has 
risen up again, to do what we see him doing in the sculptures, — bind 
up his water-plants about the throne of Egypt. These fluctuations of 
superiority have produced extraordinary eff"ects on the people for the 
time: but these are not the forming and training influences which I am 
thinking of now. It is true that when Nile gains too great an accession 
of strength, and runs in destructively upon the Desert, men are in despair 
at seeing their villages swept away, and that torrents come spouting out 
from the sacred tombs in the mountain, as the fearful clouds of the sky 
come down to aid the river of the valley. It is true that in the oppo- 
site case, they tremble when the heavens are alive with meteors, and 
the Nile is too weak to rise and meet the sand columns that come 
marching on, followed by blinding clouds of the enemy ; and that 
famine is then inevitable, bringing with it the moral curses which 
attend upon hunger. It is true that at such times strangers have seen 
(as we know from Abdallatif, himself an eye-witness) how little 
children are made food of,"^ and even men slaughtered for meat, like 
cattle. It is true that such have been the violent efl'ects produced on 
men's conduct by extremity here ; — efl'ects much like what are pro- 
duced by extremity everywhere. It is not of this that I am thinking 
when regarding the influence on a nation of the incessant struggle be- 
tween the Nile and the Desert. It is of the formation of their ideas 
and habits, and the training of their desires. 

From the beginning, the people of Egypt have had everything to 
hope from the river; nothing from the desert: much to fear from the 
desert; and little from the river. What their Fear may reasonably be, 
any one may know who looks upon a hillocky expanse of sand, where 
the little jerboa burrows, and the hysena prowls at night. Under these 
hillocks lie temples and palaces, and under the level sands, a whole 
city. The enemy has come in from behind, and stifled and buried it. 
What is the Hope of the people from the river, any one may witness 
who, at the regular season, sees the people grouped on the eminences, 
watching the advancing waters, and listening for the voice of the crier, 
or the boom of the cannon which is to tell the prospect or event of the 
inundation of the year. Who can estimate the eff'ect on a nation's mind 
and character of a perpetual vigilance against the desert; (see what it is 
in Holland of a similar vigilance against the sea !) and of an annual 



* Abdallatif, Relation de I'Egypte. Livre II. ch. 2. 



48 



EASTERN LIFE. 



mood of Hope in regard to the Nile? Who cannot see what a stimu- 
lating and enlivening influence this periodical anxiety and relief must 
exercise on the character of a nation ? — And then, there is the effect on 
their Ideas. The Nile was naturally deified by the old inhabitants. 
It was a god to the mass ; and at least one of the manifestations of deity 
to the priestly class. As it was the immediate cause of all they had, 
and all they hoped for, — the creative power regularly at work before 
their eyes, usually conquering, though occasionally checked, it was to 
them the Good Power; and the Desert was the Evil one. Hence came 
a main part of their faith, embodied in the allegory of the burial of 
Osiris in the sacred stream, whence he rose, once a year, to scatter 
blessings over the earth. — Then, the structure of their country ori- 
ginated or modified their ideas of death and life. As to the disposal of 
their dead; — they could not dream of consigning their dead to the 
waters, which were too sacred to receive any meaner body than the 
incorruptible one of Osiris : nor must any other be placed within reach 
of its waters, or in the way of the pure production of the valley. 
There were the boundary rocks, with the hints afTorded by their caves. 
These became sacred to the dead. After the accumulation of a few 
generations of corpses, it became clear how much more extensive was 
the world of the dead than that of the living : and as the proportion of 
the living to the dead became, before men's eyes, smaller and smaller, 
the state of the dead became a subject of proportionate importance to 
them, till their faith and practice grew into what we see them in the 
records of the temples and tombs, — engrossed with the idea of death 
and in preparation for it. The unseen world became all in all to them ; 
and the visible world and present life of little more importance than as 
the necessary introduction to the higher and greater. The imagery 
before their eyes perpetually sustained these modes of thought. Every- 
where they had in presence the symbols of the worlds of death and 
life; — the limited scene of production, activity and change; — the valley 
with its verdure, its floods, and its busy multitudes, who were all 
incessantly passing away, to be succeeded by their like; while, as a 
boundary to this scene of life, lay the region of death, to their view 
unlimited, and everlastingly silent to the human €ar. — Their imagery 
of death was wholly suggested by the scenery of their abode. Our 
reception of this is much injured by our having been familiarized with 
it first through the ignorant and vulgarized Greek adoption of it, in 
their imagery of Charon, Styx, Cerberus and Rhadaraanthus : but if 
we can forget these, and look upon the older records with fresh eyes, 
it is inexpressibly interesting to contemplate the symbolical representa- 
tions of death by the oldest of the Egyptians, before Greek or Persian 
was heard of in the world ; the passage of the dead across the river or 
lake of the valley, attended by the Conductor of souls, the god Anubus ; 
the formidable dog, the guardian of the mansion of Osiris, (or the di- 
vine abode;) the balance in which the heart or deeds of the deceased 
are weighed against the symbol of Integrity; the infant Harpocrates, — 
the emblem of a new life, seated before the throne of the judge; the 
range of assessors who are to pronounce on the life of the being come 



THE NILE. 



49 



up to judgment ; and finally the judge himself, whose suspended sceptre 
is to give the sign of acceptance or condemnation. Here the deceased 
has crossed the living valley and river; and in the caves of the death 
region, where the howl of the wild dog is heard by night, is this pro- 
cess of judgment going forward; and none but those who have seen the 
contrasts of the region with their own eyes, — none who have received 
the idea through the borrowed imagery of the Greeks, or the traditions 
of any other people,— can have any adequate notion how the mortuary 
ideas of the primitive Egyptians, and, through them, of the civilized 
world at large, have been originated by the everlasting conflict of the 
Nile and the Desert. 

How the presence of these elements has, in all ages, determined the 
occupations and habits of the inhabitants, needs only to be pointed out; 
the fishing, the navigation, and the almost amphibious habits of the 
people are what they owe to the Nile ; and their practice of laborious 
tillage, to the Desert. A more striking instance of patient industry can 
nowhere be found than in the method of irrigation practised in all times 
in this valley. After the subsidence of the Nile, every drop of water 
needed for tillage, and for all other purposes, for the rest of the year, 
is hauled up and distributed by human labor — up to the point where 
the sakia, worked by oxen, supersedes the shadoof, worked by men. 
Truly the desert is here a hard task-master — or rather a pertinacious 
enemy, to be incessantly guarded against — but yet a friendly adversary, 
inasmuch as such natural compulsion to toil is favorable to a nation's 
character. 

One other obligation which the Egyptians owe to the Desert struck 
me freshly and forcibly, from the beginning of our voyage to the end. 
It plainly originated their ideas of art. Not those of the present in- 
habitants, which are wholly Saracenic still, but those of the primitive 
race who appear to have originated art all over the world. The first 
thing that impressed me in the Nile scenery, above Cairo, was the an- 
gularity of almost all forms. The trees appeared almost the only 
exception. The line of the Arabian hills soon became so even as to 
give them the appearance of being supports to a vast table-land, while 
the sand heaped up at their bases was like a row of pyramids. Else- 
where, one's idea of sand-hills is that of all round eminences they are 
the roundest, but here their form is generally that of truncated pyra- 
mids. The entrances of the caverns are square. The masses of sand 
left by the Nile are square. The river banks are graduated by the 
action of the water, so that one may see a hundred natural Nilometers 
in as many miles. Then, again, the forms of the rocks, especially the 
limestone ranges, are remarkably grotesque. In a few days, I saw, 
without looking for them, so many colossal figures of men and animals 
springing from the natural rock, so many sphinxes and strange birds, 
that I was quite prepared for anything I afterwards met with in the 
temples. The higher we went up the country, the more pyramidal 
became the forms of even the mud houses of the modern people; and 
in Nubia, they were worthy, from their angularity, of old Egypt. It 
is possible that the people of Abyssinia might, in some obscure age, 
4 



50 



EASTERN LIFE. 



have derived their ideas of art from Hindostan, and propagated them 
down the Nile. No one can now positively contradict it. But I did 
not feel on the spot that any derived art was likely to be in such per- 
fect harmony with its surroundings as that of Egypt certainly is— a 
harmony so w^onderful as to be perhaps the most striking circumstance 
of all to a European, coming from a country where all art is derived,* 
and its main beauty therefore lost. It is useless to speak of the beauty 
of Egyptian architecture and sculpture to those who, not going to 
Egypt, can form no conception of its main condition — its appropriate- 
ness. I need not add that I think it worse than useless to adopt Egyp- 
tian forms and decoration in countries where there is no Nile and no 
Desert, and where decorations are not, as in Egypt, fraught with mean- 
ing — pictured language — messages to the gazer. But I must speak 
more of this hereafter. Suffice it now that in the hills, angular at their 
summits, with angular mounds at their bases, and angular caves in 
their strata, we could not but at once see the originals of temples, 
pyramids and tombs. Indeed, the pyramids look like an eternal fixing 
down of the shifting sand-hills which are here a main feature of the 
desert. If we consider further ^vhat facility the desert has afforded for 
scientific observation — how it was the field for the meteorological studies 
of the Egyptians, and how its permanent pyramidal forms served them, 
whether originally or by derivation, wdth instruments of measurement 
and calculation for astronomical purposes — we shall see that, one way 
or another, the desert has been a great benefactor to the Egyptians of 
all time, however fairly regarded, in some senses, as an enemy. The 
sand may, as I said before, have a fair side to its character, if it has 
taken a leading part in determining the ideas, the feelings, the worship, 
the occupation, the habits, and the arts of the people of the Nile valley, 
for many thousand years. 

The hills now, above Antaeopolis, approached the river in strips, 
which, on arriving at them, we found to be united by a range at the 
back. Some fine sites for cities were thus afforded, and many of 
them were no doubt thus occupied in past ages. A little further on 
rises a lofty rock; a precipice three hundred feet high, ^vhich our Rais 
was afraid to pass at night. I was on deck before sunrise on the morn- 
ing of the 11th to see it, but I found there was no hurry. A man was 
sent for milk from this place, so I landed too and walked some way 
along the bank. On the Lybian side I overlooked a rich, green, clumpy 
country; on the Arabian side, the hills came down so close to the 
water as to leave only a narrow path, scarcely passable for camels at 
high Nile. There were goats among the rocks; and on the other 
shore, sheep, whose brown wool is spun by distaff, by men in the 
fields, or traveling along the bank. The unbleached wool makes the 

* Even the Gothic spire is believed by those who knoAV best to be an attenuated 
obelisk ; as the obelisk is an attenuated pyramid. Our Gothic aisles are sometimes 
conjectured to be a symmetrical stone copy of the glades of a forest; but there are 
pillared aisles at El Karnac and IMedeenet Haboo. which were constructed in a 
country which had no woods, and before the forests of northern Europe are discerni- 
ble in the dim picture of ancient history. 



THE NILE. 



51 



brown garments which all the men wear. I often wished that some 
one would set the fashion of red garments in the brown Nile scenery. 
We saw more or less good blue every day, but the only red dress I 
had seen yet was at Asyoot, where it looked so well that one wished 
for more. The red tarboosh is a treat to the eye, when the sun 
touches it; or, at night, the lamp on deck — but the crew did not wear 
the tarboosh, only little white cotton caps, in the absence of the full- 
dress turban. 

This day was remarkable for our seeing the first doum palm (an 
angular tree!) and the first crocodile. Alee said he had seen a croco- 
dile two days before: but we had not. And now we saw several. 
The first was not distinguishable, to inexperienced eyes, from the 
inequalities of the sand. The next I dimly saw slip ofT into the water. 
In the afternoon, a family of crocodiles were seen basking on a mud 
bank which we were to pass. As we drew near, in silence, the whole 
boat's company being collected at the bows, the largest crocodile slip- 
ped into the water, showing its nose at intervals. Another followed, 
leaving behind the litde one, a yellow monster, asleep, with the sunlight 
full upon it. Mr. E. fired at it, and at the same moment the crew set 
up a shout. Of course, it awoke, and was off in an instant, but unhurt. 
We had no ball; and crocodile shooting is hopeless, with nothing bet- 
ter than shot. Our crew seemed to have no fear of these creatures, 
plunging and wading in the river without hesitation, whenever occasion 
required. There being no wind, we moored at sunset; and two of us 
obtained half-an-hour's walk before dark. Even then, the jackals were 
howling after us the whole time. Our walk was over mud of various 
degrees of dryness, and among young wheat and little tamarisks, 
springing from the cracked soil. 

On the 13th we fell in with Selim Pasha, without being aware what 
we were going to see. Our crew having to track, the Rais and Alee 
went ashore for charcoal, and Mr. E. and I for a walk. Following a 
path which wound through coarse grass and thorny mimosas, we found 
ourselves presently approaching the town of Soohadj : and near the 
arched gate of the town, and everywhere under the palms, were groups 
and crowds of people, in clean turbans and best clothes. Then appear- 
ed, from behind the trees on the margin, three boats at anchor, one 
being that of Selim Pasha himself ; the others for his suite. He had 
come up the river to receive his dues, and was about to settle accounts 
now at Soohadj. He had a crew of twenty-three men, and was pro- 
ceeding day and night. His interpreter accosted us, offered us service, 
discussed the wind and weather, and invited us to take coffee on board 
the Governor's boat. I was sorry to be in the way of Mr. E.'s going; 
but I could not think of such an adventure, in Mrs. Y.'s absence. We 
saw the Governor leave his boat, supported by the arms, for dignity's 
sake. He then took his seat under a palm, and received some papers 
offered him. He looked old, short, and very business-like. A scribe 
sat on the top of his cabin, with inkhorn and other apparatus ; and a 
man was hurrying about on shore, with a handful of papers covered 
with Arabic writing. All this, with the turbaned and gazing groups 



52 



EASTERN LIFE. 



under the tamarisks, the white-robed soldiers before the gate of the 
barracks, the stretch of town-walls beside us, and the minarets of 
Eckmim rising out of the palm-groves on the opposite shore, made up 
a new and striking scene. Mr. and Mrs. Y. saw, from the boat, part 
of the reverse side : they saw eight men in irons, reserved to be bastin- 
adoed for the non-payment of their taxes. — As w^e walked on, we 
passed a school, where the scholars were moving their bodies to and 
fro, and jabbering as usual. Then we descended the embankment of 
the canal which winds in towards the town, and crossed its sluice; and 
then we came out upon a scene of millet-threshing. Two oxen, muz- 
zled, were treading out the grain : five men were beating the ears, and 
a sixth was turning over and shaking the husks with a rake. Such are 
the groups which incessantly delight the eye in Eastern travel. — Next, 
we found ourselves among a vast quantity of heavy stones, squared for 
building. They were deeply imbedded, but did not look like the re- 
mains of ancient buildings. And now it was time for us to stop, lest 
there should be difficulty, if we went further, in getting on board. So 
we sat down in a dusty but shady place, among some fowl-houses, and 
beside an oven. I never took a more amusingly foreign walk. — A 
short ramble that evening was as little like home; but more sad than 
amusing. We entered a beautiful garden, or cultivated palm orchard, 
which was in course of rapid destruction by the Nile. Whole plots 
of soil, and a great piece of wall were washed away. Repeatedly we 
saw signs of this destruction; and we wondered whether an equivalent 
advantage was given anywhere else. By day we passed towns which, 
like Manfaloot, were cut away, year by year; and by night the sullen 
plash caused by the fall of masses of earth, was heard. In countries 
where security of property is more thought of than it is here, this 
liability must seriously affect the value of the best portions of the land ; 
those which have a river frontage. Here it appears to be quietly sub- 
mitted to, as one of the decrees of inevitable fate. The circumstance 
of the Nile changing its course must also affect some historical and 
geographical questions: — in the one case as regards the marches of 
ancient armies, and the sites of old cities ; and in the other, the relations 
of different parts of the country. Many towns, called inland by geo- 
graphers, are now on the banks of the river. At Manfaloot, it is clear 
that the divergence from the old course under the rocks is very great: 
and near Benee Hasan the change is made almost from year to year. 
When Sir G. Wilkinson visited the caves,"*" the river was so far off as 
to leave a breadth of two miles between it and the rocks : and Mrs. 
Romer, who was there the year before us, describes the passage to the 
caves as something laborious and terrific : whereas, when we visited the 
caves on our return, we found the river flowing at the base of the 
acclivity; and we reached the tombs easily in twelve minutes. From 
the heights, we traced its present and former course, and could plainly 
see a third bed, in which it had at one time run. We were sorry to 
see it cut through fine land, where the crops on either bank showed 



• Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes. 11. 45. 



THE NILE. 



53 



what the destruction must have been. The banks were falling in dur- 
ing the few hours of our stay; and here, as in similar places, we obser- 
ved that the river was more turbid ihan usual. These local accidents 
must largely affect the great question of the rate of rising of the bed of 
the river, and, in consequence, that of the whole valley; a question 
which some have attempted to determine by a comparison of the dates 
of the buildings at Thebes with the depth of the sand accumulated 
above their bases. 

The next place where we went ashore, Girgeh, once stood a quar- 
ter of a mile inland : it is now in course of being washed down. It 
is a miserable place, as might be expected, with such a fate hanging 
over it. We staid here an hour, for the purchase of bread, fowls, and 
a sheep. We gave 30 paras for a fowl; 6s. for a sheep ; and a 

piastre (2|f/.) for 42 eggs. The small bazaars had few people in them 
at this hour (7 a. m.), and of those few many were blind ; and on our 
return to the boat, we found a row of blind people on the bank, hoping 
for baksheesh. The millet stalks here measured eleven feet ; and of 
course, the fields are a perfect jungle. We saw occasionally the millet 
stalks burnt, and strewn over the fields for a top-dressing. At other 
times we observed that where the millet had been cut, wheat was sown 
broadcast among the stubble, which was left to rot. The only manur- 
ing that we saw, besides this top-dressing, was that of the gardens with 
pigeons' dung; and the qualifying of the Nile mud with sand from 
the desert, or dust out of the temples, brought in frail-baskets on the 
backs of asses. 

Two of our sapient crew having quarreled at mess about which 
should have a particular morsel of bread, and fought noisily on shore, 
the Rais administered the bastinado. The first was laid down, and 
held by the feet and shoulders, while flogged with a boat-pole. He 
cried out vigorously. The other came forward cheerfully from the 
file, and laid himself down. The Rais broke the pole over him : but 
he made no noise, jumped up, spat the dust out of his mouth, and went 
to work at the tow-rope, as if nothing had happened. They seem to 
bear no malice, and joke with one another immediately after the bit- 
terest quarrels. One of our Nubians wears his knife in a sheath, 
strapped about the upper part of his left arm. Another wears an 
amulet in the same manner. Two who came from Dongola have 
their faces curiously gashed with three cuts on each cheek, and four 
on each side of the eye. These cuts are given them by their parents 
in childhood, for beauty marks. 

We now began to meet rafts of pottery coming down from Kenneh, 
the seat of the manufacture of the water jars which are in general use. 
Porous earth and burnt grass are the chief materials used. We meet 
seven or more rafts in a group. First, a layer of palm fronds is put 
on the raft; and then a layer of jars ; then another layer of each. The 
jars all have their mouths out of the water. They are so porous that 
their conductors are continually employed in emptying them of water : 
that is, they are always so employed when we meet them. Not being 
worth sponges, they dip in and wring out cloths, with strings to them. 



54 



EASTERN LIFE. 



The oars are mere branches, whose boughs are tied together at the ex- 
tremity. Though they bend too much, they answer their purpose 
pretty well : but the whole affair looks rude and precarious enough. 
In curious contrast with their progress was that of the steamer, con- 
veying the Prince of Prussia, which we met to-day, hurrying down 
from Thebes. We preferred our method of voyaging, though we now 
advanced only about twelve miles a day, and had been fourteen days 
making the same distance that we did the first two. 

We cannot understand why the country boats are so badly laden as 
they appear to be. The cargo is placed so forward as to sink the 
bows to the water; and so many founder in consequence that we can- 
not conceive why the practice is not altered. We have seen several 
sunk. One was a merchant boat that had gone down in the night, 
with five people in her. She was a sad spectacle, — her masts and rig- 
ging appearing above water, in the middle of the stream. 

On the morning of the 19th, on leaving our anchorage near the high 
rock of Chenoboscion, we found that a wind had sprung up ; and we 
enjoyed the sensation of more rapid progress. We might now hope 
to see the temple of Dendara in a few hours. The Arabian mountains 
retreated, and the Lybian chain advanced. Crocodiles plunged into 
the water as we sailed past the mud banks. The doum palms began 
to congregate, and from clumps they became woods. Behind one of 
these dark woods, I saw a mass of building which immediately fixed 
my attention ; and when a turn of the river brought us to a point where 
the sunlight was shining into it, I could clearly distinguish the charac- 
teristics of the temple of Dendara. I could see the massive portico ; — 
the dark spaces between the pillars, and the line of the architrave. 
Thus much we could see for two hours from the opposite shore, as 
Mr. E. had to ride up to Kenneh for letters : but, as the wind was fair, 
and the temple was two miles off, we left till our return any closer ex- 
amination of it. 

While Mr. E. and Alee were gone to the town, Mr. Y. walked 
along the shore, in the direction of Selira Pasha's boats ; and Mrs. Y. 
and I were busy about domestic business on board. I was sewing on 
deck when Mr. Y. returned, and told me he had been invited to an 
audience of Selim Pasha. When pipes and coffee had been brought, 
conversation began, through the medium of some Italian gentlemen of 
the Pasha's suite. On Mr. Y.'s expressing his hope that, by means 
of commerce, a friendly feeling between the Egyptians and English 
would always subsist and increase, one of these officers exclaimed, 
" How should that be, when you have robbed us of Syria?" On Mr. 
Y.'s pacific observations being again received with an angry recurrence 
to this sore subject, the Pasha interposed, saying, "These are great 
and important affairs which are for our superiors to settle, and with 
which we subordinates have nothing to do. Let us talk of something 
pleasant." While Mr. Y. was telling me this, an elderly man, with a 
white beard, hideous teeth, and coarse face altogether, was approaching 
the boat : and to my dismay, he stepped on board, — or rather, was 
pushed in by his attendants. Mr. Y. had been silting with his back 



WALKS ASHORE. 



55 



to the shore ; and now, taken by surprise, seeing the white beard, and 
having his head full of his late interview, he announced to me " his 
Excellency, Selim Pasha." Up I jumped, with my lap-full of work, 
even more disappointed that this should be the hero of that romantic 
story than dismayed at the visit. And he looked so unlike the old man 
I saw under the palm at Souhadj ! I called up Mrs. Y. from the cabin. 
Mr. Y. made signs to the cook (for our only interpreter was absent) 
for pipes and coffee : and we sat down in form and order, and abun- 
dant awkwardness. To complete the absurdity of the scene, a line of 
towels, just out of the wash-tub, were drying on the top of the cabin ; 
and the ironing blanket was on the cabin table. The first relief was 
Mrs. Y.'s telling me, " It is not Selim Pasha. These are the son and 
grandson of the English consul at Kenneh." 

Then I began to remember certain things of the English consul at 
Kenneh — what a discreet old Arab he is reported to be — behaving ten- 
derly to European ladies, and pressing parties to go and dine with him ; 
and then, when they are on the way to the town, stepping back to the 
boat, and laying hands on all the nice provisions he can find, from eggs 
to Maraschino : so that he extracts a delectable dinner for himself out 
of his showy hospitality to strangers. While I was reviving all this 
in my memory, the old man himself was coming down to us. He 
shook hands with us all round ; and, as I expected, kissed the hand of 
each lady, and pressed us to go up and dine with him. Alee, who had 
in the meantime returned with Mr. E., and seen from afar that we were 
holding a levee, had received his instructions to decline decisively all 
invitations, and convey that we were in a hurry, as the wind was fair 
for Thebes : so we were let off with a promise that we would dine 
with the Consul on our return, if we could. But now arrived the 
Governor of Kenneh, a far superior-looking person, handsomely dressed 
in fine brown broadcloth. The Consul's elderly son took the oppor- 
tunity of exploring the cabins, peeping into every corner, and exam- 
ining Mr. E.'s glass and fowling-piece. We feared a long detention 
by visitors ; but these departed before any others came; and it was 
still early in the afternoon when we spread our sail, and were off for 
Thebes. 



CHAPTER V. 

WALKS ASHORE.— FIRST SIGHT OF THEBES.— ADFOO.— CHRISTMAS 

DAY. 

The next morning (Sunday, December 20th) we found we must 
still have patience, as we should not see Thebes for another day. The 
wind had dropped at seven, the evening before, and had brought us only 
three miles this morning. In the course of the day we were made 
fully sensible of our happiness in having plenty of time, and in not 
being pressed to speed by any discomfort on board our boat. We 



56 



EASTERN LIFE. 



were walking on shore at noon, among men and children busy about 
their tillage, and sheep and asses and shadoofs, when we saw two 
boats, bearing the British and American flags, floating down the stream. 
They wore round, and landed their respective parties, who were Cairo 
acquaintances of ours. Neither party had been beyond Thebes. How 
we pitied them when we thought of Philos and the Cataracts, and the 
depths of Nubia, which we were on our way to see ! The English 
gentlemen were pressed for time, and were paying their crew to work 
night and day ; by which they did not appear to be gaining much. 
The American gentleman and his wife were sufl'ering cruelly under the 
misery of vermin in their boat: a trouble which all travelers in Egypt 
must endure in a greater or less degree, but which we found much less 
terrible than we had expected, and reducible to something very trifling 
by a little housewifely care and management.* The terms in which 
they spoke of Thebes, after even their hasty journey, warmed our 
hearts and raised our spirits high. 

The next day was the shortest day. It was curious to observe how 
we had lately gained five minutes of sunlight by our progress south- 
wards. Though we cared to-day for nothing but Thebes, we conde- 
scended to examine, in our early walk, a strange, dreary-looking place 
which we were informed was one of the Pasha's schools. It was a 
large square mud building, crumbling away in desolation. No chil- 
dren were there ; but two ofiicers stared at us out of a windov/. An- 
other, armed to the teeth, entered the enclosure, and spoke to us, we 
suppose in Arabic, as he passed. The plots of ground were neglected, 
and the sheds losing their roofs. It is evident that all is over with this 
establishment, while the people of the district appear in good condi- 
tion. There were shadoofs at small distances, and so many husband- 
men at hand that they relieve each other every two hours at this labo- 
rious work, a crier making known along the bank the expiration of the 
time. We walked through flourishing fields of tobacco and millet: 
and we gathered, for the first time, the beautiful yellow blossom of the 
cotton shrub. The castor oil plant began here to be almost as beauti- 
ful as the cotton. 

Whenever we went for a walk, we were most energetically warned 
against the dogs of the peasantry : and one of the crew always sprang 
ashore with a club for our defence, when we were seen running into 
the great danger of going where we might meet a dog. I suppose the 
danger is real — so invariably did the peasants rush towards us, on the 
barking of a dog, to pelt the animal away. I never saw any harm 
done by a dog, however; and I never could remember to be on my 
guard; so that one or another of the crew had often to run after me at 
full speed, when I had forgotten the need of a club bearer, and gone 
alone. 

From breakfast time this day, we were looking over southwestwards, 
to the Lybian hills which we knew contained the Tombs of the Kings : 
and before noon, we had seen what we can never forget. On our re- 



• Appendix B. 



THEBES. 



57 



turn, we spent eight days at Thebes ; eight days of industrious search, 
which make us feel familiar with the whole circuit of monuments. 
But the first impression remains unimpaired and undisturbed. I rather 
shrink from speaking of it ; it is so absolutely incommunicable ! The 
very air and sunshine of the moment, the time of day, the previous 
mood of mind, have so much share in such a first impression^as this, 
that it can never come alike to any two people. I can but relate what 
the objects were ; and that most meagerly. 

The wind was now carrying us on swiftly ; and as we, of course, 
stood as high as we could, on the roof of the cabin, the scene unfolded 
before us most favorably. Every ridge of hills appeared to turn, and 
every recess to open, to show us all sides of what we passed. To our 
left, spread a wide level country — the eastern expanse of the plain of 
Thebes, backed by peaked mountains, quite unlike the massive Ara- 
bian rocks which had hitherto formed that boundary. There was a 
thick wood on that bank ; and behind that wood Alee pointed out to 
us the heavy masses of the ruins of El Karnac. Vast and massy, in- 
deed, they looked. But, as yet, the chief interest was on the western 
shore. The natural features were remarkable enough — the vastness of 
the expanse, especially, which confounded all anticipation. The mo- 
dern world obtruded itself before the ancient — the shores dressed in the 
liveliest green, and busy with Arabs, camels, and buffalo, partially in- 
tercepting the view behind. Between these vivid shores, and before 
and behind the verdant promontories, lay reach after reach of the soft 
gray, brimming river. Behind this brilliant foreground stretched im- 
measurable slopes of land, interrupted here and there by ranges of 
mounds or ridges of tawny rocks, and dotted over with fragments of 
ruins, and teeming with indications of more. In the rear was the no- 
ble guard of mountains which overlooks and protects the plain of 
Thebes : mountains now nearly colorless — tawny as the expanse be- 
low ; but their valleys and hollows revealed by the short, sharp shadows 
of noon. The old name for this scene was running in my head — " the 
Lybian suburb ;" and when I looked for the edifices of this suburb, 
what did I not see ? I could see, even with the naked eye, and per- 
fectly with the glass, traces of the mighty works which once made 
this, for greatness, the capital of the world. Long rows of square 
apertures indicated the ranges of burying places. Straggling remains 
of building wandered down the declivities of sand. And then the 
Rameseum was revealed, and I could distinguish its colossal statues. 
And next appeared — and my heart stood still at the sight — the Pair. 
There they sat together, yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene 
and vigilant — ^still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages 
and the eclipse of Egypt. I can never believe that anything else so 
majestic as this Pair has been conceived of by the imagination of Art. 
Nothing even in nature certainly ever affected me so unspeakably ; no 
thunder storm in my childhood, nor any aspect of Niagara, or the 
great Lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years. 
I saw them afterwards, daily, and many times a day, during our stay 
at Thebes ; and the wonder and awe grew from visit to visit. Yet no 



58 



EASTERN LIFE. 



impression exceeded the first ; and none was like it. Happy the tra- 
veler who sees them first from afar ; that is, who does not arrive at 
Thebes by night ! 

We had not thought of stopping at Thebes on our way up the river : 
but we were delighted to find that the Rais wanted to have his head 
shaved, and Alee to buy a sheep and some bread. We drew to the 
El-Uksur (Luxor) shore, and ran up to the ruins. The most conspicu- 
ous portion from the river is the fourteen pillars which stand parallel 
with it, in a double row: but we went first to the great entrance to the 
temple. I find here in my journal the remark which occurs oftener 
than any other; that no preconception can be formed of these places. 
I know that it is useless to repeat it here; for I meet everywhere at 
home people who think, as I did before I went, that between books, 
plates, and the stifi' and peculiar character of Egyptian architecture and 
sculpture, Egyptian art may be almost as well known and conceived 
of in England as on the spot. I can only testify, without hope of being 
believed, that it is not so; that instead of ugliness, I found beauty ; in- 
stead of the grotesque, I found the solemn: and where I looked for 
rudeness, from the primitive character of Art, I found the sense of the 
soul more effectually reached than by works which are the result of 
centuries of experience and experiment. The mystery of this fact sets 
one thinking, laboriously; I may say, painfully. Egypt is not the 
country to go to for the recreation of travel. It is too suggestive and 
too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study. One's powers of 
observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought: and the light- 
est-hearted voyager, who sets forth from Cairo eager for new scenes 
and days of frolic, comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six 
thousand years ago, kindred with the mummy. Nothing but large 
knowledge and sound habits of thought can save him from returning 
perplexed and borne down; — unless indeed it be ignorance and levity. 
A man who goes to shoot crocodiles and flog Arabs, and eat ostrich's 
eggs, looks upon the monuments as so many strange old stone-heaps, 
and comes back "bored to death with the Nile;" as we were told we 
should be. He turns back from Thebes, or from the First Cataract; — 
perhaps without having even seen the Cataract, when within a mile of 
it, as in a case I know ; and he pays his crew to work night and day, 
to get back to Cairo as fast as possible. He may return gay and un- 
worn : and so may the true philosopher, to whom no tidings of Man in 
any age come amiss; who has no prejudices to be painfully weaned 
from, and an imagination too strong to be overwhelmed by mystery, 
and the rush of a host of new ideas. But for all between these two 
extremes of levity and wisdom, a Nile voyage is as serious a labor as 
the mind and spirits can be involved in ; a trial even to health and tem- 
per such as is little dreamed of on leaving home. The labor and care 
are well bestowed, however, for the thoughtful traveler can hardly fail 
of returning from Egypt a wiser, and therefore a better man. 

There is something very interesting in meeting with a fellow-feeling 
in ancient travelers so strong as may be found in the following passage 
from Abdallatif with that of some modern Egyptian voyagers. The 



THEBES. 



59 



passage is almost the same as some entries in my journal, made when 
I had never heard of the Bagdad physician. He speaks of Memphis, 
as seen in his day, and as, alas ! one fears it will be seen no more. 
"Notwithstanding the immense extent of this city, and its high anti- 
quity : notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of the different governments 
under which it has passed: notwithstanding the efforts that various 
nations have made to destroy it in obliterating the minutest traces, ef- 
facing its smallest remains, carrying off the materials, even to the very 
stones, of which it was constructed; laying waste its edifices, mutilating 
the figures which adorned them; and notwithstanding all that four thou- 
sand years and more have been able to add to such causes of destruction, 
these ruins yet offer to the eye of the spectator such a combination of 
wonders as confounds his understanding, and as the most eloquent man 
would vainly attempt to describe. The longer he contemplates, the 
more admiration he feels: and each returning glance at these ruins 
causes new ecstasy. Scarcely has the spectacle suggested one idea to 
the mind of the spectator, when it overpowers it by a greater; and 
when he thinks he has obtained a perfect knowledge of what is before 
him, he presently learns that his conceptions are still far below the 
truth."* A yet older traveler, Herodotus, says the same thing more 
briefly : " I shall enlarge upon what concerns Egypt, because it con- 
tains more wonders than any other country ; and because there is no 
other country where we may see so many works which are admirable, 
and beyond all expression."! 

It is not the vastness of the buildings which strikes one first at El- 
Uksur, — vast as they are ; it is the marvel of the sculptures with which 
they are covered ; — so old, so spirited, and so multitudinous. It is 
Homer, alive before one's eyes. And what a thought it is, to one 
standing here, how long this very sculpture has been an image and a 
thought to great minds placed one far behind another in the stages of 
human history ! Herodotus, who here seems a modern brother-tra- 
veler, stood on this spot, and remembered the Iliad as we were now 
remembering it. He spoke of Homer, his predecessor by four hundred 
years, as we speak of those who lived in the crusading times. And 
Homer told of wars which were the same old romance to the people 
of his time as the crusades are to us. And at the time of these wars, 
this Thebes was a city of a thousand years ; and these battle-pictures 
now before our eyes were antiquities, as our cathedrals are to us. 
Here we were standing before one of the " hundred gates" through 
which Homer says the Theban warriors passed in and out; and 
on the flanks of this gateway were sculptured the achievements 
of the ancestors of these warriors. There are the men and horses 
and chariots, as if in full career, — as full of life as if painted, and 
painted in a modern time ! The stones of the edifice are parting in 
many places ; and these battle-figures extend over the cracks, almost 
uninjured by the decay. These graven epics will last some time 
longer, though the stone records will give way before the paper. 



* Relation de TEgypt. Livre 1. ch. 4. 



t Herod. II, 35. 



60 



EASTERN LIFE. 



The guardian colossi are mighty creatures, with their massive 
shoulders and serene heads rising out of the ground. A third helmet 
is visible ; and among the Arab huts near, a fourth. We saw here for 
the first time columns with the lotus-shaped capitals ; the capitals being 
painted, and the blossoms, buds and leaves which filled up the outline 
being very distinct. One test of the massive character of the work 
was curious. A huge block of the architrave has fallen from its place, 
and rests on the rim of the cup of the lotus, without breaking it. We 
w^ere now introduced to some of the details of Egyptian architecture, 
and to some of its great separate features : but all unity of impression 
was obviated by the intrusion of the mud huts which are plastered up 
against the ruins throughout their range. When we came down the 
river, and had become familiar with the structure of Egyptian temples, 
we could make out the plan of this, and somewhat discharge from view 
the blemishes which spoiled everything now. But at present, we were 
not qualified, and we carried away a painful impression of confusion as 
well as ruin. 

As we sailed away, I obtained another view of the Pair ; and I 
watched them till I could hardly tell whether it was distance or the 
dusk which hid them at last. 

The wind carried us on well : too well ; for a stay of the foremast 
gave way ; and this hindered our progress. The calm and pathetic- 
looking Rais rushed towards us, vociferated, and pulled Mr. E. by the 
wrist to the forepart, to see the crack, — of which Mr. E., with all his 
experience in such matters, thought litde. The Rais, however, is re- 
sponsible for the condition of the boat, and he feared that the owner 
would "cut his neck off " if anything was carried away. So we 
moored to the bank, and some little nails were driven in, so as to do 
no good whatever ; and then it came out that the Rais wanted to stop 
here for the night. We so protested against this that he appeared to 
yield ; but at the end of a mile or so, he drove us decisively into the 
eastern bank. 

As I was walking the deck before tea, I saw two lights moving up 
under the opposite bank ; and supposed them to be from Selira Pasha's 
boats. They crossed the stream, however ; and the boats they be- 
longed to drove into the bank so immediately behind us as to lift our 
rigging. It was our Scotch friends, and the American party. The 
gendemen immediately exchanged visits ; and our own party brought 
us some amusement when they returned. Mr. E.'s first exclamation, 
as he threw down his hat, was, " What a lucky fellow that is ! He 
has shot a crocodile." " And why not, if he carries ball?" "Ah ! I 
should have brought ball. He has done it very cleverly, though." 
And when the Scotchman returned the call after tea, we found that he 
had indeed done a difhciilt and hazardous feat very well : and he was 
in possession of the stuffed hide as a trophy. 

The next morning, we had an amusement which seemed ridiculous 
enough in the Thebaid, but certainly rather exciting ; — a boat race. 
When I came on deck, the Scotch gentlemen were just mounting the 
bank, with their fowling pieces; and their crew and ours were pre- 



ADFOO. 



61 



paring to track. I was about to go ashore also for a walk, when I 
observed that our Rais was getting out the sail, though there was not 
a breath of wind. It was clear that he expected to fall in with a wind 
at the next reach of the river : so I remained on board. Our sail caught 
the eye of our Scotch friends. I saw the halt of their red tarbooshes 
over the bushes that fringed the bank. They scampered back, and 
leaped on board their boat; and in another moment, up went their sail. 
In another, up went the American's ! Three sails, no wind, and three 
crews tracking, at a pace scarcely less funereal than usual ! — At the 
expected point, the sails filled, all at the same instant, and off we went. 
For an hour or more, I could not believe that we were gaining ground, 
though Mr. E. declared we were. When it was becoming clear that 
we were, he told that, provoking as it was, we must take in sail and 
yield the race, as we had to take up, in yonder bay, our milk mes- 
senger. There he was, accordingly ; and quick was the manoeuvre of 
putting in, and snatching up the poor fellow. Half a dozen hands 
hauled him in, and helped to spill the milk. Then, what a shout of 
laughter there was when the Scotchman shortened sail, and took up 
his milkman too : and after him, the Americans ! We could relish the 
milk now, which we had thought so much in our way before. The 
race was fairly decided before ten o'clock. We beat, as we ought, 
from the superiority of our boat : and before noon, our Scotch friends 
put into Isna (Esneh) where their crew were to bake their bread. 
This was the last place, north of the Cataract, where they could do so. 

Isna looks well from the river ; but we could see nothing of the 
temple, which is lost to view in the town. We left it for our return : 
and we meant to do the same with that of Adfoo (Edfou). But it came 
in sight while we were at dinner the next day, just when there was no 
wind. We decided that no time would be lost by a run up to the 
temple : so we sprang ashore, among cotton and castor-oil plants, and 
walked a mile in dust, through fields and under rows of palms, and 
among Arab dwellings, to the front of the mighty edifice. No one of 
the temples of Egypt struck me more with the conviction that these 
buildings were constructed as fortifications, as much as for purposes of 
religious celebration. I will not here give any detailed account of this 
temple ; partly because I understood these matters better when I after- 
wards saw it again : and yet more, because it was now almost buried 
in dust, much of which was in course of removal on our return, for 
manuring the land. — It was here, and now, that I was first taken by 
surprise with the beauty ; — the beauty of everything; — the sculptured 
columns, with their capitals, all of the same proportion and outline, 
though exhibiting in the same group the lotus, the date palm, the doum 
palm and the tobacco : — the decorations — each one, with its fullness of 
meaning — a delicately sculptured message to all generations, through 
all time : — and, above all, the faces. I had fancied the faces, even the 
portraits, grotesque : but the type of the old Egyptian face has great 
beauty, though a beauty little resembling that which later ages have 
chosen for their type. It resembles, however, some actual modern 
faces. In the sweet girlish countenances of Isis and Athor, I often 



62 



EASTERN LIFE. 



observed a likeness to persons — and especially one very pretty one — 
at home. 

The other thing that surprised me most was the profusion of the 
sculptured inscriptions. I had often read of the whole of the surfaces 
of these temples being covered with inscriptions: but the fact was 
never fairly in my mind till now : and the spectacle was as amazing 
as if I had never heard of it. The amount of labor invested here 
seems to shame all other human industry. It reminds one more of the 
labors of the coral insect than of those of men. 

After taking a look at the scanty remains of the smaller temple, we 
returned to the boat, to set foot on land no more, we hoped, till we 
reached the boundary of Egypt, at the old Syene. My friends at home 
had promised to drink our healths at the First Cataract on Christmas 
day : and, when the wind sprang up, on our leaving Adfoo, and we 
found, on the morning of the 24th, that it had carried us twenty-five 
miles in the night, we began to believe we should really keep our 
appointment. 

The quarries of Silsilis have a curious aspect from the river ; — half 
way between rocks and buildings: for the stones were quarried out so 
regularly as to leave buttresses which resemble pillars or colossal 
statues. Here, where men once swarmed, working that machinery 
whose secret is lost, and moving those masses of stone which modern 
men can only gaze at — in this once busy place, there is now only the 
hyaena and its prey. In the bright daylight, when the wild beast is 
hidden in its lair, all is as still as when we passed. 

We saw, this morning, a man crossing the river, here very wide, on 
a bundle of millet stalks. His clothes were on his head, like a huge 
turban, and he paddled himself over with the branch of a tree. 

At sunset, the contrasting colors of the limestone and sandstone 
ranges were striking. The limestone was of a bright pale yellow : the 
sandstone purplish. By moonlight, we saw the ruins of K6m Umboo 
(Kom Ombos), which looked fine on the summit of their rock on the 
eastern bank. 

Christmas morning was like a July morning in England. We had 
made good progress during the night, and were now only eleven miles 
from Aswan (Essouan), the old Syene — the frontier between Egypt 
and Nubia. When we came within two miles, we left our letter- 
writing. The excitement was too strong to allow of any employment. 
At present, we saw nothing of the wildness of the scenery, of which 
we had read so much. We found that higher up. The river became 
more and more lake-like; and there was a new feature in the jutting 
black rocks. The shores were green and tranquil ; and palms 
abounded more than in any place we had passed. Behind these rich 
woods, however, the Lybian desert rose, yellow with sand drifts. — Our 
crew became merr}' in the near prospect of rest. One of them dressed 
himself very fine, swathing himself with turbans, and began to dance, 
to the music and clapping of the rest. He danced up to us, with in- 
sinuating cries of " baa" and " baksheesh," as a hint for a present of a 
sheep. Ill the midst of this, we ran aground, and the brisk fellows 



ASWAN. 



63 



threw down their drum, pipe, and finery, and went to work as usual. 
We were now making for the shore, in order to land a man who had 
begged a passage from Cairo. He was a Rais ; and had served at 
Constantinople and elsewhere for twenty-five years, during which 
time he had never been home. For many years he had had no tidings 
of wife or children; and now, when within a mile or two of his home, 
he showed no signs of perturbation. He made his acknowledgments 
to us with an easy cheerful grace, put off his bright red slippers, and 
descended into the mud, and then thrust his muddy feet into his new 
slippers with an air of entire tranquillity. We watched him as long 
as we could see him among the palms, and should have been glad to 
know how he found all at home. The scene around looked far indeed 
out of the bounds of Christendom, this Christmas-day, till I saw, on a 
steep, the ruins of the Coptic convent of St. George. Aswan was now 
peeping over the palms on the eastern shore ; and opposite to it was 
the island of Elephantine — half rubbish, half verdure. We moored to 
the shore below Aswan just at two o'clock ; and thus we kept our 
appointment, to dine at the First Cataract on Christmas-day. Our 
dinner included turkey and plum-pudding. Our Arab cook succeeded 
well with the last-mentioned novelty. We sent a huge cande of it to 
the Rais, who ate it all in a trice, and gave it his emphatic approbation. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ASWAN.— SLAVES.— FIRST RIDE IN THE DESERT.— QUARRIES.— ELE- 
PHANTINE.— RIVER SCENERY.— PREPARATIONS FOR NUBIA.— FIRST 
SIGHT OF PHILCE. 

As soon as our plank was down, a sort of mob-market was formed 
on shore. There was a display of stuffed crocodile, spears, ebony 
clubs, straw-baskets, coins, walking sticks, an ostrich's egg, a conjurer, 
&c. It was at this place that a girl offered me for sale an English 
half-penny ; and another the glass stopper of a little bottle. Here, as 
everywhere, my ear trumpet was handled and examined with quick 
curiosity ; and in almost every case, from Nubia to the Lebanon, the im- 
mediate conclusion was the same. The inquirers put the small end to 
their lips, and gave a satisfied nod. It was clearly a pipe, with an 
enormous bowl! At Aswan, however, we staid long enough for the 
people to discover what the trumpet was for; and from the moment of 
the discovery, they did their best to enable me to do without it. As 
we passed through the lane they made for us, they pressed forwards 
to shout into my ears "baksheesh! baksheesh," till Alee pushed and 
flogged them away. I wonder at their perseverance in thus inces- 
santly begging of strangers ; for we could not learn that they ever got 
anything by it. If, as it appeared to me, travelers give only in return 
for service, or in consideration of some infirmity, the perseverance in 
begging seems wonderful. I saw at this place parents teaching a little 



64 



EASTERN LIFE. 



one to speak: and the word they tried it with was " baksheesh." I 
saw a little fellow just able to carry his father's slippers, — which were 
almost as big as himself : — his father gave him a careful training in 
hugging the slippers with one arm, while he held out the other hand to 
me for baksheesh. The people here were very good looking. They 
cannot grow provisions enough for their numbers, — the desert encroach- 
ing too much to permit the cultivation of more land than the mere 
river banks: but they import enough for their wants. Their renowned 
dates are their principal article of exchange; and traffic goes on here 
in henneh, baskets, senna, charcoal and slaves from Upper Ethiopia 
and Abyssinia. Of course, it was impossible to learn their numbers. 
Nobody knows ; and if any one knew, he would not tell. A census may 
be, and has been ordered ; but it cannot be executed. The popular 
dread of the government renders it impossible. The fellahs (peasants) 
have such a terror of increased taxation and of the conscription, that 
they abscond on the mention of a census; and some w^ho can afford 
it bribe the officials to suppress their names, and those of their fami- 
lies. The last thing that can be learned of any Egyptian town or 
district is its population. 

The walls of the streets are blank here; — not a window, or break of 
any kind, but a low door here and there. The bazaars looked poor ; 
and I believe the traffic is chiefly carried on elsewhere. We saw two 
slave-bazaars. One was an inclosure on the rising ground above our 
boat. The slaves here were only five or six, and all children; — all 
under sixteen years of age. They were intelligent and cheerful-look- 
ing ; and I recognized, at the first glance, the likeness to the old Egyp- 
tian countenance and costume. The girls had their faces uncovered; 
and their hair in the Ethiopian fashion, — precisely that which we see 
in the old sculptures and paintings. One little girl was preparing the 
pottage for their supper, very cleverly and earnestly. She was said to 
be fifteen ; and 15/. was the sum asked for her. The other bazaar 
was on the outskirts of the town, and near our boat. It contained, 
when we saw it on our return, a dozen boys, and about fifteen girls. 
Most of the girls were grinding millet between two stones, or knead- 
ing and baking cakes. They were freshly oiled, in good plight, and 
very intelligent-looking, for the most part. Some of them were really 
pretty in their way, — in the old Egyptian way. They appeared cheer- 
ful, and at home in their business ; and there can scarcely be a stronger 
contrast than between this slave-market and those I had seen in the 
United States. The contrast is as strong as between the serfdom of 
the Egyptian, and the freedom of the American inhabitants of the 
respective countries: and of course, the first aspect of slavery is infi- 
nitely less repulsive in Egypt than in America. What I learned, and 
may have to tell, of the life of the modern Egyptians proves, however, 
that the institution is no more defensible here than elsewhere. 

I saw a little girl on the shore making cord, for tying round the 
waists of the men ; and was extremely surprised to observe that the 
process is the same as that of bobbin-making with the lyre by English 
ladies. Instead of an ivory lyre, this child had two crossed sticks ; 



CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE NILE. 



65 



and her cotton thread was very coarse. It was striking to see this 
little art existing in places so widely apart. 

We walked, this afternoon, to the ruins of the old town, and over- 
looked its desolation from the top of the rock above the river. The 
translation of the name of this town is " the Opening:" and a great 
opening this once was, before the Nile had changed its character in 
Ethiopia, and when the more ancient races made this rock their watch- 
tower, on the frontier between Egypt and the South. 

That the Nile has changed its character, south of the First Cataract, 
has been made clear by some recent examination of the shores and 
monuments of Nubia. Dr. Lepsius has discovered watermarks so high 
on the rocks, and edifices so placed as to compel the conviction, that 
the bed of the Nile has sunk extraordinarily, by some great natural 
process, either of convulsion or wear.* The apparant exaggerations 
of some old writers about the Cataracts at Syene, may thus be in some 
measure accounted for. If there really was once a cataract here, in- 
stead of the rapids of the present day, there is some excuse for the 
reports given from hearsay, by Cicero and Seneca. Cicero says that 
" the river throws itself headlong from the loftiest mountains, so that 
those who live nearest are deprived of the sense of hearing, from the 
greatness of the noise." Seneca's account is,—" When some people 
were stationed there by the Persians, their ears were so stunned with 
the constant roar, that it was found necessary to remove them to a 
more quiet place." — ^Supposing the Cataract formerly to have been of 
any height rendered necessary by the discoveries of Dr. Lepsius, it is 
clear that Syene must have been the station for the transshipment of 
merchandise passing north or south. The granite quarries, too, whence 
much of the building material of old Egypt was drawn, must have 
added to the business of the place. It is clear, accordingly, that this 
was, in all former times, a station of great importance. There were 
temples at Elephantine, to guard the interests of the neighborhood, and 
to attract and gratify strangers. There was a Nilometer, to give tidings 
of the deposits of the great god Nilus. There was a garrison in the 
time of the Persians, and again in that of the Greeks : and Roman 
fortifications stand in ruin on the heights around. The Saracenic re- 
mains are obvious enough : and thus we have, on this frontier spot, 
and visible from the rock on which we stood, evidence of this place 
having been prized by successive races, as the Opening which its pre- 
sent name declares it to be. 

The ruins of the Saracenic town make their site desolate beyond 
description: — more desolate to my eyes, if possible, than the five acres 
I saw laid waste by the great New York fire. Two women were 
sitting under the wall of a roofless house, with no neighbors but a few 
prowling dogs. They warned me away till they saw the rest of my 
party coming up the ascent. The Island of Elephantine, opposite, 
looked as if just laid waste by an earthquake, scarcely one stone being 
left upon another of all its once grand edifices. On its rocks were 



5 



* Appendix C. 



66 



EASTERN LIFE. 



hieroglyphic inscriptions, many and deeply carved. In a hollow of the 
desert behind us lay the great cemetery, where almost every grave has 
its little stone, with a Cufic inscription. The red granite was cropping 
up everywhere; and promontories and islets of black basalt began to 
show themselves in the river. Behind us, at the entrance of the desert, 
were the mountainous masses of granite, where we were to-morrow to 
look for the celebrated quarries, and their deserted obelisk. Before 
we came down from our point of survey, we saw the American party 
crossing, in a ferry-boat, to Elephantine. They had arrived after us, 
and were to set out, on their return, to Cairo the next day ! 

As we sat on deck under our awning, this evening, the scene was strik- 
ing ; — the brilliant moonlight resting on the quiet groves, but contend- 
ing on the shore with the yellow glow from the west, which gilded the 
objects there; and especially the boat-building near the water's edge; 
— the crews forming picturesque groups, with their singing, clapping 
and dancing, while close beside them, and almost among them, were 
the Rais and two other men going through their prayers and prostra- 
tions. This boat-building was the last we saw up the river: and a rude 
affair it was : — the planks not planed, and wide apart, and irregular. 

A kandjia was here, which had brought a party of Turkish officers. 
We had the offer of it, to take us to the Second Cataract; our dahabieh 
being, of course, too large to ascend the Cataract here. Our gentlemen 
thought it would not do ; — that Mrs. Y. and I could not put up with 
its accommodations, even for a fortnight. We thought we could : but 
we agreed that the first thing to be done was to go to the head of the 
Cataract, and see what boats could be had there. 

The next morning, therefore, we had breakfast early, and set off on 
asses for Mahatta, — the village at the head of the Cataract. This, our 
first ride in the desert, was full of wonder and delight. It was only 
about three miles : but it might have been thirty, from the amount of 
novelty in it. Our thick umbrellas, covered with brown holland, were 
a necessary protection against the heat, which would have been almost 
intolerable, but for the cool north wind. — I believed before that I had 
imagined the Desert: but now I felt that nobody could. No one could 
conceive the confusion of piled and scattered rocks, which, even in a 
ride of three miles, deprives a stranger of all sense of direction, except 
by the heavens. These narrow passes among black rocks, all suffo- 
cation and glare, without shade or relief, are the very home of despair. 
The oppression of the sense of sight disturbs the brain, so that the will 
of the unhappy -wanderer cannot keep his nerves in order. I thought 
of poor Hagar here, and seemed to feel her story for the first time. I 
thought of Scotch shepherds lost in the snow, and of their mild case 
in comparison with that of Arab goat-herds lost in the Desert. The 
difference is of death by lethargy and death by torture. We were af- 
terwards in the depth of Arabia, and lived five weeks in tents, in the 
Desert : but no Arabian scene impressed me more with the character- 
istics of the Desert than this ride of three miles from Aswan to Mahatta. 
The presence of dragon flies in the Desert surprised me ; — not only 
here, but in places afterwards — where there appeared to be no water 



THE DESERT MAHATTA. 



67 



within a great distance. To those who have been wont to watch the 
coming forth of the dragon-fly from its sheath on the rush on the mar- 
gin of a pool, and flitting about the mountain watercourse, or the moist 
meadows at home, it is strange to see them by dozens glittering in the 
sunshine of the desert, where there appears to be nothing for them to 
alight on; — nothing that would not shrivel them up, if they rested for 
a moment from the wing. The hard dry locust seemed more in its 
place, and the innumerable beetles, which everywhere left a net-work 
of delicate tracks on the light sand. Distant figures are striking in the 
Desert, in the extreme clearness of light and shade. Shadows strike 
upon the sense here as bright lights do elsewhere. It seems to me 
that I remember every figure I ever saw in the Desert: — every veiled 
woman tending her goats, or carrying her water-jar on her head; — 
every man in blue skirting the hillocks; every man in brown guiding 
his ass or his camel through the sandy defiles of the black rocks, or 
on a slope by moonlight, when he casts a long shadow. Every mov- 
ing thing has a new value to the eye in such a region. 

When we came out upon Mahatta, we were in Nubia, and found 
ourselves at once in the midst of the wildness of which we had read 
so much in relation to the First Cataract. The Mississippi is wild : 
and the Indian grounds of Wisconsin, with their wigwam camps, are 
wild : but their wildness is only that of primitive Nature. This is fan- 
tastic, — impish. It is the wildness of Prospero's island. Prospero's 
island and his company of servitors were never out of my head between 
Aswan and the next placid reach of the river above Philce. — The rocks 
are not sublime : they are too like Titanic heaps of black paving-stones 
to be imposing otherwise than by their oddity : and they are strewn 
about the land and river to an excess and with a caprice which takes 
one's imagination quite out of the ordinary world. Their appearance 
is made the more strange by the cartouches and other hieroglyphic 
inscriptions which abound among them; sometimes on a face above 
the river; sometimes on a mere ordinary block near the path; — some- 
times on an unapproachable fragment in the middle of the stream. 
When we emerged from the Desert upon Mahatta, the scene was some- 
what softened by the cultivation behind the village, and the shade of 
the spreading sycamores and clustered palms. Heaps of dates, like 
the wheat in our granaries for quantity, lay piled on the shore; and 
mounds of packages (chiefly dates) ready for export. The river was 
all divided into streamlets and ponds by the black islets. Where it 
was overshadowed, it was dark gray or deep blue ; but where the light 
caught it, rushing between a wooded island and the shore, it was of 
the clearest green. — The people were wild, — especially the boys, who 
were naked and excessively noisy : but I did not dislike their behavior; 
which was very harmless, though they had to be flogged out of the 
path, like a herd of pigs. — We saw two boats, and immediately be- 
came eager to secure the one below. I was delighted at this, as we 
were thus not deprived of the adventure of ascending the Cataract. 

On our return, we sent Alee forward to secure the kandjia; and we 
diverged to the quarries, passing through the great cemetery with its 



68 



EASTERN LIFE. 



curious grave-stones, inscribed in the Cufic character. The marks of 
the workmen's tools are as distinct as ever on the granite of the quar- 
ries. There are the rows of holes for the wooden pegs or wedges 
which, being wetted, expanded and split the stone. There are the 
gi'ooves and the notches made, by men who died several thousands of 
years ago, in preparation for works which were never done. There 
are the playful or idle scratches made by men of old in a holiday mood. 
And there, too, is the celebrated obelisk, about which, I must take 
leave to say, some mistakes are current at this day. 

It may look like trifling to spend any words on the actual condition 
of an obelisk in the quarry : but, if we really wish to know how the 
ancients set about works which modern men aie unable to achieve, we 
must collect all the facts we can about such works, leaving it for time 
to show which are important and which are not. We spend many 
words in wondering what could be the mechanical powers known to 
the old Egyptians, by which they could detach, lift, carry, and dress 
such massess of stone as our resources are wholly inadequate to deal 
with. When we chance to meet with one such mass in a half-finished 
state, it is surely worth while to examine and report upon its marks 
and peculiarities, however unaccountable, as one step towards learning 
hereafter, how they came there. 

This obelisk was declared, by a traveler who judged naturally by 
the eye, to be lying there unfinished because it was broken before it 
was completely detached from the rock. Other travelers have repeated 
the tale, — one measuring the mass, and taking for granted that an irre- 
gular groove along the upper surface was the " crack," — the " fissure ;" 
and another, comfortably seated on an ass, not even getting down to 
touch it at all. Our friend, Mr. E., was not satisfied without looking 
into things with his own eyes and his own mind : and he not only 
measured and poked in the sand, but cleared out the sand from the 
grooves till he had satisfied himself that there is no breakage or crack 
about the obelisk at all. 

The upper surface is (near the centre of its length) about two feet 
broad : and there is every appearance of the other three sides having 
the same measurement, — as the guide says they have, — allowing for 
the inequalities of the undressed stone. There is no evidence that it 
is not wholly detached from the rock. Of course, we moderns cannot 
move it ; but the guide declares that, when cleared of sand, a stick may 
be passed under in every part. And it seems improbable that the apex 
of the obelisk should be reduced to form before the main body is severed 
from the rock. — As for the supposed " fissure," it is certainly a care- 
fully wrought groove, and no crack. Its sides are as smooth as any 
tablet; and its breadth appears to be uniform: — about an inch wide at 
the top. Its depth is about three inches ; and it is smooth and sound 
all along the bottom. Near it is a slight fault in the stone ; a skin- 
deep crack, — little more than a roughness of the surface. Across the 
upper face were some remarkable holes. Besides those which are 
usually prepared for wedges or pegs, there were two deep grooves, 
slanting and not parallel. If they had been straight and parallel, we 



QUARRIES OBELISK ELEPHANTINE. 



69 



should have immediately supposed them intended to hold the chains 
or ropes by which the mass was to be raised : and it is still possible 
that they were so. But we do not know what to make of the groove 
which is commonly called the fissure. It is deep ; it is longitudinal; 
and it is devious ; not intended, evidently, to bear any relation to the 
centre of the face, nor to be parallel with either side, nor to be straight 
in its direction. The only conjecture we could form was that it was 
in preparation for the dressing of the stone, after the erection of the 
obelisk: but then its depth appears too great for such a purpose. We 
observed a considerable bulge on the upper face of this obelisk. We 
all know that this is necessary, to obviate that optical deception which 
gives an appearance of concavity to a perfectly correct pyramidal line ; 
and we all know that the old Egyptians so well understood this archi- 
tectural secret that they might be the teachers of it to all the world. 
But the knowledge of this does not lessen the surprise, when the proof 
of it, in so gigantic a form, is under one's hand. — The block was 
ninety feet long above the sand, when we were there ; and the guide 
said that the sand covered thirty more. Judging of the proportions of 
the apex from what we saw, it must either require much cutting away 
in the dressing, or be a little spire. It would doubtless be much re- 
duced by cutting. — We left the quarries, full of speculation about what 
manner of men they were who cut and carved their granite mountains 
in this noble style, and by what inconceivable means they carried away 
their spoils. It would hardly surprise me more to see a company of 
ants carrying a life-size statue, than it did to measure the building stones 
and colossi of the East. 

In our walk this evening we saw a pretty encampment of Albanian 
soldiers among the palms. One had to rub one's eyes to be sure that 
one was not in a theatre. The open tent, with the blue smoke rising, 
the group of soldiers, in their Greek dress, on the ground, and seen 
between the palm stems ; the arms piled against a tree, and glittering 
in the last rays of the sun ; — all this was like a sublimated opera scene. 
And there was another, the next morning, when they took their de- 
parture southwards, their file of loaded camels winding away from 
under the shade into the hot light. 

We went earlyjo Elephantine, this morning (the 27th), after seeing 
the Scotch boat arrive. The remains on Elephantine are not now very 
interesting ; — at least, we did not find them so : and we do not enter 
into the ordinary romance about this " Island of Flowers." Not only 
we saw no flowers; but M^e could perceive no traces of any; and our 
guide could not be made to understand what flowers were. Conversa- 
tion was carried on in Italian, of which the man appeared to have no 
lack. First he said there were many flowers there : then that there 
were none: and he ended by asking what " fiori" were. He shook 
his head in despair when we showed him. The northern end of the 
island is green and fertile : but the southern end is one dreary heap of 
old stones and broken pottery. The quantity of broken pottery in 
these places is unaccountable, — incredible. 

The quays are gone, and the great flight of steps to the river. The 



70 



EASTERN LIFE. 



little ancient temple of Kneph is gone; and another, and the upper 
portion of the Nilometer were pulled down, some years since, to supply 
building stone for an official's palace at Aswan. We saw, at the Nilo- 
meter, sculptured stones built in among rough ones, — some being up- 
side down, — some set on end. And this is all we could make out of 
this edifice. There is a granite gateway of the time of Alexander ; and 
this is the only erect work of any interest. — There is a statue of red 
granite, with the Osiride emblems ; — a mean and uncouth image, in 
comparison with most that we saw. Some slender and broken granite 
pillars lie about, a little to the north of the gateway : and one of them 
bears a sculptured cross ; which shows that they were part of a Chris- 
tian temple. 

The people on the island are Nubians. Many of their faces, as well 
as their forms, are fine : and they have the same well-fed and healthy 
appearance as we observe among the people generally, all along the 
great valley, and especially in the Nubian part of it. Some of the chil- 
dren were naked; some had ragged clothing; and many were dressed 
in substantial garments, though of the dusty or brown colors which 
convey an impression of dirt to an English eye. The children's hair 
was shining, even dripping with the castor-oil which was to meet our 
senses everywhere in Nubia. 

Our Scotch friends called while we were at breakfast, and offered us 
their small boat for an expedition to PhilcB. ]Much as 1 longed to see 
Philos, I was startled at the idea of going by water in a small boat, as a 
mere morning trip: and I was sorry to see our saddles put away, as it 
appeared to me more practicable to go by the shorter way of the desert, 
taking a boat from Mahatta. If we had known what we soon learned 
about the water passage, we should not have dreamed of such an adven- 
ture. My next uneasiness was at finding that we were going with only- 
Arab rowers, without an interpreter. It certainly was foolish ; but the 
local Rais had arranged the affair; and it was not for us to dispute the 
wisdom of the man who must know best. I am glad we went; for we 
obtained admirable views of this extraordinary part of the river, at more 
leisure, and with more freedom than when ascending the Cataract in 
our kandjia, amidst the hubbub of a hundred natives. 

The wear of the rocks by thousands of annual inundations exhibits 
singular effects, in holes, unaccountable fissures, grotesque outlines, and 
gigantic piling up of blocks. The last deposit of soil on the slopes of 
smooth stones, and in every recess and crevice, reminded me of the odd 
tillage one sees in Switzerland, where a miniature field is made on the 
top of a boulder, by confining the deposited earth with a row of stones. 
And when we were driven to land, in the course of the morning, it was 
striking to see in what small and parched recesses a few feet of millet 
and vetches were grown, where the soil would yield anything. The 
deposit was always graduated, always in layers, however little there 
might be of it. In some stones in the middle of tiie current, there were 
wrought grooves, and holes for wedges ; for what purpose, and whether 
these stones were always in the middle of the current, let those say 
who can. They looked like a preparation for the erection of colossal 



PANTOMIMIC LANGUAGE USELESS. 



71 



statues, which would have a finer effect amidst this frontier cataract 
than any Madonna del Mare has amidst the lagoons of Venice. The 
water here was less turbid than we had yet seen it. Its gushings round 
the rocks were glorious to see, and, in my opinion, to feel, as we made 
directly towards them, in order to be swirled away by them to some 
opposite point which we could not otherwise reach. The only time I 
was really starded was when we bumped tremendously upon a sunk- 
en rock. I saw, however, that the rowers were confident and merry ; 
and when this is the case with local residents, in any critical passage 
of foreign travel, one may always feel secure. Remembering this, I 
found our hard won passages through sharp little rapids, and the eager- 
ness and hubbub of the rowers delightful. But all did not find it so: 
and truly there was a harum-scarum appearance about the adventure 
which justified a pause and reconsideration what we should do. 

It was impossible to obtain any information from the Arabs. Panto- 
mime may go a good way with any people in Europe, from a general 
affinity of ideas, and of their signs, which prevails over a continent 
where there is nearly uniform civilization. But it avails nothing, and 
is even misleading, between Europeans and the natives of Oriental 
countries. Our gentlemen were much given to pantomime, in the ab- 
sence of an interpreter; and it was amusing to me to see, with the 
practised eye of a deaf person, how invariably they were misunder- 
stood; and often, when they had no suspicion of this themselves. 
They naturally employed many conventional signs; and, of course, so 
did the Arabs : and such confusion arose out of this that I begged my 
friends never to put down in their journals any information which they 
believed they had obtained by means of pantomime. It might be that 
while they were inquiring about a pyramid, the Arabs might be reply- 
ing about the sun : while they were asking questions about distance, 
the Arabs might be answering about ploughing : and so on. To-day 
we could make out nothing: so v^e offered very intelligible signs that 
we wished to land. We landed in a cove of a desert region on the 
eastern shore : and while Mr. E. was drawing maps on the sand, and 
the rowers were clamoring and gesticulating about him, I made for a 
lofty pile of rocks, a little way inland, to seek for a panoramic view. 
It was dreadfully hot : but I obtained a magnificent view of the river, 
as well as the surrounding country ; by far the finest view of the Cata- 
ract that offered. — I could see nothing of Philoe, which was in fact 
hidden behind the eastern promontories : but from the great sweep the 
river made above us, and the indescribable intricacy of its channels 
among its thousand scattered rocks, it seemed plain tome that it would 
take some hours to reach the Sacred Island. I reported accordingly ; 
and Mr. E. thought he had ascertained from the crew that it would 
take three hours to get to Philce. As it was by this time one o'clock, 
we decided to return. It afterwards appeared that the three hours the 
men spoke of were from our dahabieh to Philoe : but I am sure it would 
have taken much more. 

From my point of observation, I had seen that several weirs were 
constructed among the rapids, where a few blackies were busy, — some 



72 



EASTERN LIFE. 



leaning over from the rocks, and others up to their shoulders in the 
stream. Their dusky figures contrasted finely with the glittering 
waters; and it was a truly savage African scene. One man came 
swimming to us, with a log under his breast, bringing a fish half as big 
as himself. It was like a gigantic perch; we bought it for lid., and 
found it better than Nile fish usually are. — I have often read of the great 
resource the Egyptians have in the fish of their river. They do not 
seem to prize it much ; and I do not wonder. We thought the Nile 
fish very poor in quality, and commended the natives for eating in 
preference the grain and pulse which their valley yields in abundance. 

Several people had collected, — ^there is no saying from whence — in 
our cove to see us depart : and I was glad they did ; for their figures 
on the rocks were beautiful. One little naked boy placed himself on 
the top of a great boulder in an attitude of such perfect grace, — partly 
sitting, partly kneeling, with his hands resting on one foot, — that I 
longed to petrify him, and take him home, an ebony statue, for the in- 
struction of sculptors. There is no training any English child to 
imitate him. An attitude of such perfect grace must be natural : but 
not, I suppose, in our climate, or to any one who has sat on chairs. 

Our return, with the current, was smooth, pleasant and speedy. We 
found that the kandjia had been cleaned, sunk, (three drowned rats 
being the visible result of the process,) raised, and dried; and the stores 
were now being laid in : and to-morrow we were to go up to the Ra- 
pids, to leave the next day clear for the ascent of the Cataract. — This 
evening was so warm that Mrs. Y. and I walked on the shore for some 
time without bonnet or shawl; the first and last occasion, no doubt, of 
our doing so by moonlight on the 27th of December. 

The next morning I rose early, to damp and fold linen ; and I was 
ironing till dinner-time, that we might carry our sheets and towels in 
the best condition to the kandjia. No one would laugh at, or despise 
this who knew the importance, in hot countries, of the condition of 
linen; and none who have not tried can judge of the difi'erence in 
comfort of ironed linen and that which is rough dried. By sparing a 
few hours per week, Mrs. Y. and I made neat and comfortable the 
things washed by the crew; and when we saw the plight of other tra- 
velers, — gentlemen in rough dried collars, and ladies in gowns which 
looked as if they had been merely wrung out of the wash-tub, we 
thought the little trouble our ironing cost us well bestowed. Every- 
body knows now that to take English servants ruins everything, — de- 
stroys all the ease and comfort of the journey; and the Arabs cannot 
iron. They cannot comprehend what it is for. One boat's crew last 
year decided, after a long consultation, that it was the English way of 
killing lice. This was not our crew : but I do not think ours under- 
stood to the last the meaning of the weekly ceremony of the flat-iron. 
The dragoman of another party, being sounded about ironing his em- 
ployer's white trowsers, positively declined the attempt; saying that 
he had once tried, and at the first touch had burnt off the right leg. 
If any lady going up the Nile should be so happy as to be able to 
iron, I should strongly advise her putting up a pair of flat-irons among 



PREPARATIONS FOR NUBIA. 



73 



her baggage. If she can also starch, it will add much to her comfort 
and that of her party, at a little cost of time and trouble. 

We went on board our kandjia to dinner, at two o'clock, and were 
off for the entrance of the Cataract. The smallness of our boat, after 
our grand dahabieh, was the cause of much amusement, both to-day 
and during the fortnight of our Nubian expedition. In the inner cabin 
there was only just room for Mrs. Y. and me by laying our beds close 
together ; and our dressing-room was exactly a yard square. The 
gentlemen's cabin was somewhat larger; but not roomy enough to ad- 
mit of our having our meals there, — unless a strong cold wind drove 
us in to tea ; — which, I think, happened twice. Our sitting room was 
a pretty little vestibule, between the cabins and the deck. This ex- 
actly held our table and two chairs ; the other seats being two lockers, 
on which were spread gay carpets. When we sat down to our morn- 
ing employments, we w^ere careful to bring at once all the books, &c., 
that we were likely to want, as we could not pass in and out without 
compelling our neiglibors to rise to make way. For all this, and 
though we felt, on our return to our dahabieh, as if we had got from 
a coaster into a man-of-war, w^e were never happier than in our little 
kandjia. There was some amusement in roughing it for a fortnight ; 
and the Nubian part of our voyage was full as interesting as any other. 

The Rais of the Cataract was to meet us, the next morning, with 
his posse, at a point fixed on, above the first rapid, which we were to 
surmount ourselves. We appeared to be surmounting it, just at dusk. 
Half our crew were hauling at our best rope on the rocks, and the 
other half poling on board ; and we were slowly, — almost impercepti- 
bly — making way against the rushing current, and had our bows fairly 
through the last mass of foam, when the rope snapped. We swirled 
down and away, — none of us knew whither, unless it were to the bot- 
tom of the river. This was almost the most anxious moment of our 
whole journey ; but it was little more than a moment. The boat, in 
swinging round at the bottom of the rapid, caught by her stern on a 
sand bank: and our new Rais quickly brought her round, and moored 
her, in still water, to the bank. 

Here we were for the night: and we thought it a pity not to take 
advantage of the leisure and the moonlight to visit Phiioe. So the gen- 
tlemen and I crossed the rapids to the main in a punt, mounted capital 
asses, and struck across the desert for Mahatta, where we could get a 
boat for Philos. 

The sun had just set when we left the kandjia ; and the Desert looked 
superb in the after glow. It had the last depth of coloring I have ever 
seen in pictures, or heard described. The clear forms and ravishing 
hues make one feel as if gifted with new eyes. 

The boat which took us from Mahatta to Phiioe was too heavy for 
her hands, and could hardly stem some of the currents : but at last, 
about seven o'clock, we set our feet on the Holy Island, and felt one 
great object of our journey accomplished. What a moment it was, 
just before, when we first saw Phiioe, as we came round the point, — 
saw the crowd of temples looming in the mellow twilight. And what 



74 



EASTERN LIFE. 



a moment it was now, when we trod the soil, as sacred to wise old 
races of men as Mecca now to the Mohammedan, or Jerusalem to the 
Christian ; the huge propyla, the sculptured walls, the colonnades, the 
hypaethraP temple all standing, in full majesty, under a flood of moon- 
light ! The most sacred of ancient oaths was in my mind all the 
while, as if breathed into me from without ; — the awful oath " By Him 
who sleeps in Philoe." Here, surrounded by the imperishable Nile, 
sleeping to the everlasting music of its distant Cataract, and watched 
over by his Isis, whose temple seems made to stand for ever, was the 
beneficent Osiris believed to lie. There are many Holy Islands scat- 
tered about the seas of the world : the very name is sweet to all ears : 
but no one has been so long and so deeply sacred as this. The waters 
all round were, this night, very still ; and the more suggestive were 
they of the olden age when they afforded a path for the processions 
of grateful worshipers, who came from various points of the mainland, 
with their lamps, and their harps, and their gifts, to return thanks for 
the harvests which had sprung and ripened at the bidding of the god. 
One could see them coming in their boats, there where the last western 
light gleamed on the river : one could see them land at the steps at 
the end of the colonnade : and one could imagine this great group of 
temples lighted up till the prominent sculpture of the walls looked al- 
most as bright and real as the moving forms of the actual offerers. — 
But the silence and desertion of the place soon made themselves felt. 
Our footsteps on the loose stones, and our voices in an occasianal ques- 
tion, and the flapping wings of the birds whom we disturbed were 
the only sounds : and the lantern wliich was carried before us in the 
shadowy recesses was a dismal light for such a place. 1 could not, 
under the circumstances, make out anything of the disposition of the 
buildings : and I think that a visit to Philoe by moonlight had better be 
preceded by a visit to Philoe by daylight : but I am glad to have seen 
the solemn sight, now that I can look back upon it with the fresh eyes 
of clear knowledge of the site and its temples. 

A kandjia lay under the bank when we arrived. It had brought our 
Scotch friends from Mahatta ; and we found them in the court of the 
hypEethral temple, sitting on the terrace wall in the moonlight, — the 
gentlemen with their chibouques, — the ladies with their bonnets in their 
hands. Their first and last view of Philoe was on this lovely night: 
and this was our last sight of them. They were to set oflf down the 
river the next morning, at the same hour that we were to begin the 
ascent of the Cataract. Our greetings, our jokes, our little rivalries 
were all over; and the probability was that we should never meet 
again. — How sorry we were for them that they were turning back! 
We not only had Nubia, with its very old temples — and above all, 
Aboo-Simbilt — full in prospect, but a return to this island, to obtain a 
clear knowledge of it. My heart would have been very heavy to-night 
if this had been my only view of Philoe ; — a view so obscure, so tanta- 
lizing, and so oppressive : and I was sorry accordingly for those who 
were to see it but once, and thus. 



* Hypcethral — open to the sky. 



j- Ipsamboul. 



THE CATARACT. 



75 



Our desert ride in the moonlight was very fine, among such lights 
and shadows as I never saw by night before. We encountered no 
hyaenas, though our guide carried a musket, in expectation that we 
should. We crossed the rapids in safety, and reached our boat exces- 
sively tired, and the more eager for rest because the next was to be the 
greatest day of our journey, — unless perhaps thatof our passing Thebes. 



CHAPTER VII. 
ASCENT OF THE CATARACT. 

Such an event as the ascent of the Cataract can happen but once in 
one's life ; and we would not hear of going ashore on any such plea 
as that the feat could be better seen from thence. What I wanted was 
to feel it. I would have gone far to see a stranger's boat pulled up ; 
but I would not refuse the fortune of being on board when I could. 
We began, however, with going ashore at the Rapid where we failed 
the evening before. The rope had been proved untrustworthy; and 
there was no other till we joined the Rais of the Cataract, with his 
cable and his posse. Our Rais put together three weak ropes, which 
were by no means equivalent to one strong one: but the attempt suc- 
ceeded. 

It was a curious scene, — the appearing of the dusky natives on all 
the rocks around; the eager zeal of those who made themselves our 
guards, holding us by the arms, as if we were going to jail, and scarcely 
permitting us to set our feet to the ground, lest we should fall; and 
the daring plunges and divings of man or boy, to obtain our admiration 
or our baksheesh. A boy would come riding down a slope of roaring 
water as confidently as I would ride down a sand-hill on my ass. 
Their arms, in their fighting method of swimming, go round like the 
spokes of a wheel. Grinning boys poppled in the currents ; and little 
seven-year-old savages must haul at the ropes, or ply their little poles 
when the kandjia approached a spike of rock, or dive to thrust their 
shoulders between its keel and any sunken obstacle : and after every 
such feat, they would pop up their dripping heads, and cry " bak- 
sheesh." I felt the great peculiarity of this day to be my seeing, for 
the first, and probably the only time of my life, the perception of sa- 
vage faculty: and truly it is an imposing sight. The quickness of 
movement and apprehension, the strength and suppleness of frame, and 
the power of experience in all concerned this day, contrasted strangely 
with images of the bookworm and the professional man at home, who 
can scarcely use their own limbs and senses, or conceive of any con- 
trol over external realities. I always thought in America, and I always 
shall think, that the finest specimens of human development I have 
seen are in the United States, where every man, however learned and 
meditative, can ride, drive, keep his own horse, and roof his own 
dwelling : and every woman, however intellectual, can do, if necessary, 



76 



EASTERN LIFE. 



all the work of her own house. At home, I had seen one extreme of 
power, in the meager helpless beings whose prerogative lies wholly in 
the world of ideas : here I saw the other, where the dominion was 
wholly over the power of outward nature : and I must say I as heartily 
wished for the introduction of some good bodily education at home as 
for intellectual enlightenment here. I have as little hope of the one as 
of the other ; for there is at present no natural necessity for either : 
and nothing short of natural compulsion will avail. Gymnastic exer- 
cises and field sports are matters only of institution and luxury — good 
as far as they go, but mere conventional trifles in the training of a man 
or a nation : and, with all our proneness to toil, I see no prospect of 
any stimulus to wholesome general activity arising out of our civiliza- 
tion. I wish that, in return for our missions to the heathen, the hea- 
thens would send missionaries to us, to train us to a grateful use of 
our noble natural endowments — of our powers of sense and limb, and 
the functions which are involved in their activity. I am confident that 
our morals and our intellect would gain inestimably by it. There is 
no saying how much vicious propensity would be checked, and intel- 
lectual activity equalized in us by such a reciprocity with those whose 
gifts are at the other extreme from our own. 

Throughout the four hours of our ascent, I saw incessantly that 
though much is done by sheer force, — by men enough pulling at a 
rope strong enough, — some other requisites were quite as essential ; — 
great forecast, great sagacity ; much nice management among currents, 
and hidden and threatening rocks; and much knowledge of the forces 
and subtilties of wind and water. The men were sometimes plunging, 
to heave off the boat from a spike or ledge ; sometimes swimming to 
a distant rock, with a rope between their teeth, which they carried 
round the boulders ; — then squatting upon it, and holding the end of 
the rope with their feet, to leave their hands at liberty for hauling. 
Sometimes a man dived to free the cable from a catch under water; 
then he would spring on board, to pole at any critical pass : and then 
ashore, to join the long file who were pulling at the cable. Then there 
Avere their patience and diligence — very remarkable when we went 
round and round an eddy many times, after all but succeeding, and 
failing again and again from the malice of the wind. Once this hap- 
pened for so long, and in such a boisterous eddy, that we began to 
^vonder what was to be the end of it. Complicated as were the cur- 
rents in this spot, we were four times saved from even grazing the 
rocks, when, after having nearly got through, we were borne back, and 
swung round to try again. The fifth time, there came a faint breath 
of wind, which shook our sail for a moment, and carried us over the 
ridge of foam. What a shout there was when we turned into still 
water! The last ascent but one appeared the most wonderful, — the 
passage was, twice over, so narrow, — barely admitting the kandjia, — 
the promontory of rock so sharp, and the gush of ^vater so strong ; but 
the big rope, and the mob of haulers on the shore and the islets heaved 
us up steadily, and as one might say, naturally, — as if the boat took 
her course advisedly. 



THE CATARACT. 



77 



Though this passage appeared to us the most dangerous, it was at 
the last that the Rais of the Cataract interfered to request us to step 
ashore. We were very unwilling ; but we could not undertake the 
responsibility of opposing the local pilot. He said it was mere force 
that was wanted here, the difhculty being only from the rush of the 
waters, and not from any complication of currents. But no man 
would undertake to say that the rope would hold ; and if it did not, 
destruction was inevitable. The rope held ; we saw the boat drawn 
up steadily and beautifully; and the work was done. Mr. E., who 
has great experience in nautical affairs, said that nothing could be 
cleverer than the management of the whole business. He believed 
that the feat could be achieved nowhere else, as there are no such 
swimmers elsewhere. 

The mob who took charge of us on the rocks were horribly noisy ; 
the granite we trod on was burning hot, shining and slippery : the 
light, at an hour after noon, was oppressive : and the wildness of the 
scenery and of the thronging people was bewildering. The clamor 
was the worst ; and for four hours there was no pause. This is, I 
think, the only thing in the whole affair really trying to a person of 
good nerves. The cries are like those of rage and fear ; and one has 
to remind one's self incessantly that this is only the people's way: 
and then the clamor goes for nothing. When they do speak gently, as 
to us on matters of business, their voices are agreeable enough, and 
some very sweet. — Most of the throng to-day were quite black : some 
tawny. One man looked very odd. His complexion was chocolate 
color, and his breast and top-knot red. 

We returned to the boat heated and thirsty, and quite disposed for 
wine and water. The critical passage of four hours was over ; but the 
Rais of the Cataract did not leave us till we were off Mahatta, there 
being still much skill and labor required to pass us through the yet 
troubled waters. Our boat rolled a good deal, having but little ballast 
as yet : and when we were about to go to dinner, a lurch caused the 
breakage of some soup plates and other ware: so we put off dinner till 
we should be at Philce, where we were to complete our ballast. — 
Meantime, we had the poor amusement of seeing a fight on shore, — 
the Rais and his men quarreling about the backsheesh. The pay of 
the Rais and his men was included in the contract for the kandjia : but 
of course the Rais asked for backsheesh. He was offered ten piastres, 
and refused them ; then a bottle of wine, which he put under his arm, 
demanding the ten piastres too. Then he refused both, and went off ; 
but returned for the money ; and ended by fighting about the division 
of it. The amount is small to contend about; but travelers should 
remember those who come after them, and the real good of the natives ; 
and not give way to encroachment, to save a little trouble. 

It was four o'clock when we moored at Philce under what once was 
the great landing place of the island, on the east side. The hypaethral 
temple, vulgarly called Pharaoh's Bed, stood conspicuous on the height 
above us : and we ran up to it after sunset, while the last of our ballast 
was stowing, — glad of every opportunity of familiarizing our minds 



78 EASTERN LIFE. 

with the aspect of the island, before returning to explore the remains 
in due order. — We had seen nothing more beautiful anywhere than 
what was before us this evening on our departure by moonlight. The 
pillars of the open temple first, and then the massive propyla of the 
great temple stood up against the soft, clear sky, and palms fringed 
every bank, and crowned every little eminence. The wildness of the 
rocky boundary was lost by this light. We felt that we had, for the 
present, done with rapids and islands: we were fairly in Nubia, and 
were now passing into the broad full stream of the Nile, here calmer 
than ever, from being so near the dam of the islands. The Lybian 
range shone distinctly yellow by moonlight. I thought that I had 
never heard of color by moonlight before ; and I was sure I had never 
seen it. Now my eyes feasted on it night by night. The efi'ect of 
palm clumps standing up before these yellow back-grounds, which are 
themselves bounded by a line of purple hills, with silver stars hanging 
above them, and mysterious heavenly lights gushing up from behind 
all, exceeds in rich softness any coloring that sunshine can show. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NUBIA.— THE SECOND CATARACT. 

We were not long in finding how different Nubia is from the lower 
part of the Nile valley, both in its aspect and its people. We 
soon began to admire these poor Berbers, for their industry and thrift, 
their apparent contentment, and their pleasant countenances. The 
blue underlip of the women, some tattoo marks here and there, 
nose rings, and hundreds of tiny braids of hair, all shining and some 
dripping with castor oil, might seem likely to make these people ap- 
pear ugly enough to English eyes : but the open good humor of most 
of their countenances, and the pathetic thoughtfulness of many, ren- 
dered them interesting, I may say charming to us ; — to say nothing of 
the likeness we were constantly tracing in them to the most ancient 
sculptured faces of the temples. The dyed underlip was the greatest 
drawback ; perhaps from its having a look of disease. The women 
wore silver bracelets almost universally; and a quantity of bead neck- 
laces. They swathed themselves sufficiendy in their blue garments 
without covering their faces. The men wore very little clothing: the 
children, for the most part, none at all, except that the girls had a sort 
of leather fringe tied round the loins. Sometimes the people would 
run away from us, or be on the start to do so, as we were walking on 
the shore. Sometimes the women would permit us to bid for their 
necklaces, or would offer matting or baskets for sale. Sometimes we 
found their huts empty, — left open while the family were out at work: 
and we were glad of such an opportunity of examining their dwellings, 
and forming some notion of their household economy. 

The first we entered in the absence of the inmates was a neat 



NUBIA. 



79 



house, — the walls mud, and narrowing upwards, so as to give the 
building a slightly pyramidal form. Mud walls, it must be remembered, 
are in Nubia quite a different affair from what they are in rainy coun- 
tries. The smooth plastering gives the dwelling a neat appearance, 
inside and out : and it is so firmly done, and so secure from wet in that 
climate, as not to crumble away, or, apparently, to give out dust, as it 
would with us. — The flat roof of this house was neatly made of palm: 
the stems lying along, and the fronds forming a sort of thatch. A 
dee wan of mud was raised along the whole of both the side walls ; and 
two large jars, not of the same size, were fixed at the end ; one, no 
doubt, to hold water; the other, grain. The large jar for grain is often 
fixed outside the house, opposite the door : and we were assured that 
it is never plundered. Some dwellings have partitions, one or two feet 
high, separating, as we suppose, the sleeping-places of the family. If 
the peasant has the rare fortune of possessing a cow and calf, or if 
there is an ox in the establishment, to work the sakia, there is a mud 
shed, with a flat roof like the house. The fences are of dry millet 
stalks, which rise from eleven to fourteen feet high. In the garden or 
field plot is often seen a pillar of stones, whereon stands the slinger, 
whose business it is to scare away the birds from the crops. The 
field plot is often no more than a portion of the sloping river bank. At 
the season of our visit the plots were full of wheat, barley and lupins. 
The kidney bean, with a purple blossom and very dark leaves, was 
beautiful : and so were the castor oil and cotton plants. 

Behind the dwelling which we visited, the dark stony desert came 
down to the very path : and among its scattered rocks lay, not at once 
distinguishable to the eye, the primitive burying ground of the region. 
The graves were marked out with ovals of stones ; and thorns were 
laid thick on the more recent ones. A dreary place it looked for the 
dead to lie in : but the view from it was beautiful ; and especially of 
the hedge-like Lybian bank over the river, where the fringe of mimosas 
was all overgrown and compacted with bindweed of the brightest green. 

I do not at present see that much can be done for the Nubians, as 
there certainly may for the Egyptians. In Egypt, the population once 
amounted to 8,000,000, or nearly so ; while now it is supposed to be 
not more than 2,500,000: and there seems no reason why it should 
not, with the knowledge and skill of our own time, rise to what it once 
was, and exceed it. Everywhere there are tokens, even to the care- 
less eye of a passing traveler, of land let out of cultivation, — yielded up 
without a struggle to the great old enemy, the Desert ; and even to the 
encroachments of the friendly Nile. There are signs that drainage is 
as much wanted as irrigation. However much the natural face of the 
country may be supposed to have changed, there is abundant evidence 
of wilful and careless lapse. In Nubia it is far otherwise. There, not 
only are the villages diminutive, — almost too small to be called ham- 
lets, — and the sprinkling of people between them is so scanty as barely 
to entitle the country to be called inhabited, but this is clearly from the 
scarcity of cultivable land. That it was always so is hardly conceiv- 
able when we think of the number of temples still visible between the 



80 



EASTERN LIFE. 



first and second cataracts, and the many villages declared by Pliny to 
have studded both shores : but that it is to be helped now, I do not see 
how any one can show who has beheld the hopeless yellow desert, 
with its black volcanic rocks, coming down to the very river. As the 
people have no raw material for any manufacture, it is not easy to tell 
how they could prosper by other kinds of industry, if Egypt supplied 
them ever so plentifully with food. It appeared to us that they were 
diligent and careful in making the most of what they have. As soon 
as we crossed their frontier, we saw the piers which they make, — the 
stone barriers built out into the stream to arrest the mud as it is carried 
down, and thus obtain new land. There are so many of these as to 
be mischievous in some parts ; as, when these piers are opposite to each 
other, they alter the currents, and narrow the river. — We saw dusky 
laborers on the banks, toiling with the hoe, to form the soil into ter- 
races and ledges, so as to make the most of it. From their diligence, 
it seems as if the Nubians had sufficient security to induce them to 
work : and their appearance is that of health, cheerfulness and content. 
What more can be done for them, beyond perhaps improving their 
simple arts of life, it is difficult to say. 

Simple enough, indeed, are their arts. Early one morning, when 
■walking ashore, I came upon a loom which would excite the astonish- 
ment of my former fellow-townsmen, the Norwich weavers. A little 
pit was dug in the earth under a palm; — a pit just big enough to hold 
the treadles and the feet of the weaver, who sits on the end of the pit. 
The beam was made of a slender palm stem, fixed into two blocks. 
The treadles were made of spines of the palm fixed into bits of 
stick. The shutde was, I think, a forked twig. The cotton yarn was 
even, and the fabric good ; that is evenly, woven. It was, though 
coarse, so thin that one might see the light tlirough : but that was in- 
tended, and only appropriate to the climate. I might have wondered 
at such a fabric proceeding from such an apparatus, if I had not remem- 
bered the muslins of India, produced in looms as rude as this. It ap- 
pears too, from the paintings in the tombs, that the old Egyptian looms 
were of nearly as simple a construction, though the people were cele- 
brated for their exports of fine linen and woolen stuff's. The stout- 
looking gay checkered sails of the boats, and the diversified dresses of 
the people represented in the tombs, were no doubt the produce of the 
rude looms painted up beside them. The baskets made by the Nu- 
bians are strong and good. Their mats are neat ; but neither so ser- 
viceable nor so pretty as those of India : but then these people have 
not such material as the Hindoos. Their rope making is a pretty 
sight ; — prettier even than an English ropewalk ; though that is a treat 
to the eye. AVe often saw men thus employed, — one end of their 
strands being tied to the top of a tall palm, while they stood at the 
other, throwing the strands round till they would twist no more. 

As for the rent paid by the Nubians for their land, — what we learned 
is this : but it must be observed that it is very difficult, in these coun- 
tries, to obtain reliable information. In the most civilized parts, there 
are so few data, and in the more primitive, the people are so little in 



NUBIA. 



81 



the habit of communicating- with persons who are not familiar with 
their condition and ways, that it is scarcely possible to find any uni- 
formity of testimony on any matters of custom or arrangement, — even 
the simplest. When the people tell of their taxes, the English traveler 
finds them so enormous that he is incredulous, or too indignant to carry 
away any accurate knowledge of the facts, unless he remembers that 
taxes in Egypt are not the same thing as taxes in Europe. 

As I understand the matter, it is thus, with regard to these Nubians. 
The Pasha holds the whole land and river of Egypt and Nubia in fee- 
simple, except as much as he has given away, for its revenues, to fa- 
vored individuals : and his rents are included in what are called his taxes. 
In Egypt, the people pay tax on the land. In Nubia, they pay it on the 
sakias and palms. The palms, when large, pay a piastre and a quar- 
ter (about dd.) each, per' annum : when small, three-fourths of a piastre. 
Each sakia pays a tax of three hundred and fifty piastres, or 3/. lOs.; 
and the payer may appropriate as much land as the sakia will water. 
The quantity taken is usually from eight hundred to twelve hundred 
square yards. 

The mode of collecting the taxes is quite another matter. By cor- 
ruption in the agents, or a bad practice of taking the amount in kind, 
or on account, the collector fixing the marketable value of the produce, 
there may be cruel oppression. In Egypt, it is certain this oppression 
does exist to a dreadful extent. We did not happen to hear of it in 
Nubia ; and I cannot say how it is there. But, be it as it may, it is a 
diff'erent question from the amount of tax. 

What the peasant actually pays for is the land, as above mentioned, 
the water-wheel itself, the excavation in which it works, the shed under 
which it stands, and the ox or pair of oxen by which it is driven. 
How far his bargain answers to him must depend on the marketable 
value of his produce, in a country little aff'ected by variations of sea- 
sons. He has not, however, the advantage of an open market. There 
is nobody at hand to buy, unless by the accident of a trading kandjia 
coming by ; and he has not usually the means of sending far. The 
tax-collector must therefore commonly be his market; and not such an 
one as to enable the stranger to estimate his aff'airs with any accuracy. 
All we could do was to observe whether he seemed to have enough of 
his produce left over for the support of his family, and whether his 
land appeared to be well tilled. I can only repeat that the people 
we saw in Nubia looked generally healthful and contented ; and that 
they seemed to be making the most of their little belts and corners of 
cultivable land. It is to be observed, however, that we remarked a 
great number of ruined villages, and that we could obtain no answer 
from either dragoman or Rais as to how this happened. They de- 
clared they did not know ; and, for once, Alee had neither information 
nor theory to off'er. Which was the popular enemy, the desert or the 
Pasha, I cannot undertake to say. 

Our kandjia was hired for twenty-five days, for the sum of 13/. 10s. ; 
this including all the charges of ascending the cataract, and of the crew 
(eight men) except the steersman. Of these eight men, I think four 
6 



82 



EASTERN LIFE. 



were from our dahabieh. Our rais and the rest of our crew were left 
at Aswan, in charge of the boat and such of our property as we did 
not take with us. Among those whom we carried up were two of our 
quiet, serviceable Nubians. Among those who remained behind was 
the buck, as we called him; perhaps the least serviceable of the whole 
crew, and certainly the least quiet and most troublesome ; but he was 
so extremely amusing with his pranks that we missed him, during this 
fortnight, more than we should a better lad. Our other buffoon was 
with us, the cook. An excellent cook he was ; but I do not know that 
he was much else, except a long story-teller and a consummate cox- 
comb. He was a bad riser in this (to him) winter weather; not a 
good hand at giving us breakfast early; and we were therefore not 
sorry that he declined going through the desert with us afterwards. 
The manner of declining, however, smacked of his coxcombry. "I!" 
said he. "I go through the desert to Syria! No, no; it is all very 
well for these English, whom nobody inquires after, to go and be killed 
in Syria; but I am a man whose life is of importance to his family. 
They may go without me." And we went witli a better man in his 
place. During this Nubian voyage, however, he was in his glory — 
among stranger comrades who would listen to his long stories. As I 
sat on deck in the evenings, I used to see him at the bows, flattering 
himself that he was doing his proper work; holding by the wings a 
poor fluttering turkey about to have his throat cut, and brandishing his 
great glittering knife, in the energy of his story-telling. How many 
times have I chafed at the suspense of one poor bird after another, thus 
held, head downwards, till the magniloquent cook should have finished 
his anecdote ! He fed us well, however, making a variety very hon- 
orable to him in the mutton, fowls and eggs which we lived on during 
the voyage. Beef and veal have been out of the question since the 
murrain in 1843. Since that time, the catde have not been enough to 
work the sakias, and of course there are none for food. Mr. Y. once 
had the luck to fall in with a piece of beef — at least we were assured 
it was beef — but the only good we got out of it was a lesson not to 
look for beef any more. There is great variety to be made out of a 
sheep, however, as our cook continually proved to us. I have said that 
he succeeded well in our Christmas plum-pudding. The only fire we 
had last winter was that which he made with a pool of brandy in the 
middle of our pudding. Almost the only failure he made was with a 
goose which we got at Thebes. We thought much of this goose, as a 
change from the everlasting fowls and turkeys; but the cook boiled it, 
and it looked anything but tempting. His excuse was that he feared, 
if he roasted it, that it would be "stiff"" — meaning tough. 

All the people on board, and we ourselves, found the weather cold 
in Nubia; that is, in the evenings and mornings, for at noon it was hot 
enough to make us glad of fans and water-melon. We entered the tro- 
pic at three p. m. of December 30th, and from that time till our return, 
we seemed sentenced to shiver early and late, in cold strong winds, 
such as we had hardly met with in the more northerly parts of the 
river. But the mild nights when we were at anchor were delicious — 



NUBIA. 



83 



none more so than that of the first day of this year. We sauntered 
along the camel-track which ran between the shore and the fine over- 
hanging rocks of the Arabian Desert. The brilliant moonlight cast deep 
shadows on the sand, and showed us what mighty blocks had fallen, 
and how others were about to fall. These African nights, soft, lustrous 
and silent, are worth crossing the world to feel. We met a party of 
three men, a boy and a donkey — one of the men carrying a spear. 
They returned our greeting courteously, but stopped to look after us 
in surprise. Their tread and ours was noiseless on the sand, and the 
only sound within that wide horizon was of a baying dog, far away on 
the opposite shore. 

The next morning we passed Korosko, and saw the surveying flag 
of M. Arnault, and the tents of his party of soldiers ; but we could not 
learn how his survey and his search for water proceeded, in prepara- 
tion for his road to the Red Sea. We were passing temples, from stage 
to stage, all the way up — and very clearly we saw them — each stand- 
ing on its platform of sand or rock ; but we left them all for examination 
on our return. This return must now be soon; we sighed to think 
how soon, when we met on the morning of January 3d, the two boats 
of a party who told us that, if we wished to send letters to England, 
we must prepare them, as some gentlemen were at Aboo-Simbil, and 
would presently be passing us. The great temple of Aboo-Simbil, the 
chief object of our Nubian voyage, and almost at the extremity of it, so 
near us! It damped our spirits; but we wrote our letters, and before 
we had done the expected boat came up. We little thought that morn- 
ing, any of us, that our three parties would join in the desert, and that 
we should live together in Arabia for five weeks. Yet so it turned 
out. 

I had been watching the winds and the hours in the fear that we 
should pass Aboo-Simbil in the dark. But when I came on deck, on 
the morning of the 4th, I found, to my great joy, that we were only a 
few miles from it, while a fresh breeze was carrying us well on our 
course. We passed it before breakfast. 

The facade is visible from a considerable distance ; and as soon as it 
becomes visible, it fixes the eye by the singularity of such an object as 
this smoothed recess of the rugged rock. 1 found it unlike what I ex- 
pected, and unlike, I thought, all the representations of it that I had 
seen. The portal looked low in proportion to the colossi; the facade 
was smaller, or at least narrower, than I had supposed; and the colossi 
much nearer together. The white-wash which Champollion (it is 
said) left on the face of the northernmost colossus, has the curious 
effect of bringing out the expression of countenance, so as to be seen 
far off. Nothing can be more strange than so extremely distinct a re- 
velation of a face, in every feature, perhaps a mile off. It is stranger 
than the first apparition of the goodly profile of the bronze Bor- 
romeo, near Lago Maggiore; because not only the outline of the fea- 
tures stands out clear, but every prominence and shadow of the face. 
The expression of this colossus is very agreeable; it is so tranquil and 
cheerful. We had not yet experienced the still stranger sensation of 



84 



EASTERN LIFE. 



seeing a row of statues precisely alike in all respects. We did not 
feel it now : for one of the faces being white, and another being broken, 
and many details lost by distance, the resemblance was not complete 
enough to cause in us that singular emotion. 

The smaller temple of " the Lady of Aboshek," — Athor — beside the 
large one, is very striking, as seen from the river. The six statues on 
the facade stand out boldly between buttresses ; and their reclining 
backwards against the rock has a curious effect. All about both tem- 
ples are inscribed tablets, which look like doors opening into the rock. 
We had now seen, for the first time, a rock temple : and we were glad 
that it was the noblest that we saw first. In estimating it, we must 
remember what Ethiopia was to the Egyptians of its time. The in- 
scription "foreign land" is appended to the titles of Athor in the 
smaller temple : and the establishment of these edifices here is what it 
would have been to the Romans who, conquering Great Britain, should 
have carried their most solemn worship to the Orkneys, and enthroned 
it there in the noblest edifice they could erect. But we could not fully 
estimate this till we had examined the temple on our return : nor can 
my readers do so till the time comes for a fuller account of these great 
works. 

The wind was favorable all day, and at night, as we approached 
Wadee Haifa, very strong. It is to be wished that we had some full 
meteorological reports of these regions, both for the sake of science 
and the guidance of travelers. Every voyager, I believe, speaks of 
strong wind, and, in the traveling season, north wind, near Wadee 
Haifa. Has any one heard of calm weather there ? On inquiry, on 
the spot, we were told that there is almost always a strong wind, and 
frequent gales: sometimes from the south, but usually from the north. 
This night we had experience of a Nile gale. 

Our sail was rarely tied, any part of the way ; and our Nubian Rais 
had it always held. To-night it was held by a careful personage, who 
minded his business. First, our foresail was taken in, as the wind 
rose. Then we went sounding on, the poles on each side being kept 
constantly going. Nevertheless, we struck on a sandbank with a great 
shock, and the main-sail was let fly. Half-a-dozen poor fellows, al- 
ready shivering with cold, went over the side, and heaved us off. The 
wind continued to rise ; the night was growing dark ; and presently 
we grounded again. The sail was let go ; but it would not fly. The 
wind strengthened ; the sail was obstinate, and the men who had 
sprung aloft to furl it could not get it in. We seemed to be slowly but 
surely going over : and for several minutes (a long time in such cir- 
cumstances) it seemed to me that our only chance was in the mud- 
bank on which we had struck being within our depth. But it was a 
poor chance; for there was deep water and a strong current between 
us and the shore : and it was in an uninhabited part of the country. 
Of our own party, no one spoke. Mr. E. was the only one of us 
who understood these matters ; and as he stood on the watch, we 
would not interrupt him by questions. Indeed, the case was plain 
enough ; and I saw under his calmness that he felt this to be, as he 



NUBIA. 



85 



afterwards told me, the most anxious moment of our adventures. Alee 
flew about giving orders amidst the rush of the wind ; and the cook 
worked at the poling with all his strength. Even at such a moment I 
could not but be struck with the lights from the kitchen and the cabin 
shining on the struggling men and restless sail which were descending 
together to the water, and on the figures of the Rais, Alee and another, 
as they stood on the gunwale, hauling at a rope which was fastened to 
the top of the mast. Amidst the many risks of the moment, the chief 
was that our tackle would not hold : and a crack was heard now and 
then among other awful noises. By this time, the inclination of the 
deck was such that it was impossible to stand, and I had to cling with 
all my strength to the window of the vestibule. For some time, the 
Rais feared to quit his hold of the rope on the gunwale ; but at last he 
flung it away, threw ofl" his clothes in a single instant, and sprang up 
the mast like a cat. His strong arms were what was wanted aloft. 
The sail was got in, and we righted. The standing straight on one's 
feet was like a strange new sensation after such a peril. 

It was still some time before we were afloat again ; and our crew 
were busy in the water till we were quite sorry for them. When we 
drifted off at last, our sail was spread again, and we went seething on 
through the opposing currents to find our proper anchorage at Wadee 
Haifa. And there again we had almost as much difficulty as before 
in getting in our sail. This is the worst of the latteen sails which 
look so pretty, and waft one on so well. We were wrenched about, 
and carried down some way before we could moor. 

The next morning was almost as cold as the night: but we preferred 
this to heat, as our business to-day was to ride through the western 
desert to the rock of Abooseer — the furthest point of our African travel. 
Before breakfast, the gentlemen took a short walk on shore, being 
carried over the intervening mud. They saw a small village, and a 
school of six scholars. The boys wrote, to the master's dictation, 
with reed pens, on tablets of wood, smoothed over with some white 
substance. They wrote readily, and apparently well. The lesson 
was from the Kuran ; and the master delivered it in a chanting tone. 

Two extremely small asses were brought down, to cross with us to 
the western bank. We crossed in a ferry-boat, whose sail did not 
correspond very well with the climate. It was like a lace veil mended 
with ticking. Our first visit was to the scanty remains of an interest- 
ing old temple near the landing-place. On our way to it, we passed 
some handsome children, and a charming group of women under a 
large sycamore. We thought the people we saw here — (the most 
southerly we should ever see) — open-faced and good-looking. There 
are large cattle-yards and sheds in this scarcely-inhabited spot, which 
the Pasha has made a halting-place for his droves of cattle from Don- 
gola. He continues to import largely from thence, to make up his 
losses from the murrain of 1843. We saw two large droves of as 
noble beasts as can be seen. 

Near the remains of two other unmarked and less interesting build- 
ings stand the columns of the temple begun, if not wholly erected by 



86 



EASTERN LIFE. 



two of the Theban kings, soon after the expulsion of the Shepherd 
race. The dates exist in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the pillars. 
This temple was built when the great edifices of Thebes were, for the 
most part, unthought of. El-Karnac was begun — its more humble halls; 
and El-Uksur might be surveyed, by that time, as a fitting site for a 
temple to answer to El-Karnac, but the El-Kurneh temple and the 
Ramaseum were not conceived of; for the sovereigns who built them 
were not born. The Memnon statues were yet in the quarry. The 
Pyramids were, it is now thought, about two thousand years old : and 
about this time Moses was watching the erection of the great obelisk 
(which we call Cleopatra's Needle) at Heliopolis, where he studied. 
If learned men are right in saying that the Philistines* were of the 
race expelled from Thebes, they had, by the time this temple was 
built, settled themselves under the Lebanon and along the southern 
Syrian coasts, whence they were to be driven out when Moses should 
be in his gi-ave. If, as some poets tell, Egyptus and Cadmus v/ere 
among the Shepherd intruders driven out from the Thebaid, the fifty 
nieces of the one had by this time murdered his sons, their husbands, 
and the dragon's teeth of the other had sprung up into armed men. 
It is worth while to mention such fables as these last under their as- 
signed dates; because we learn thereby to value as we ought the tan- 
gible and reliable records we meet in the Egyptian monuments, in 
contrast with the dim traditions of later born nations. We may also 
gather useful hints on the history and philosophy of art and science, 
from the mythi and the monuments together. There is writing on this 
temple : there is writing on the much-older Pyramids: and it was only 
at the time of the erection of this temple that letters were carried into 
Greece. Here is a pillar which is believed to have suggested, in a 
subsequent age, the Doric column ; the oldest of Greek pillars. Here it 
stands, remarkable for its many-sided form. It was to us now the 
oldest we had ever seen ; but we afterwards saw some, more pre- 
cisely what is called Doric, in the tombs of Benee Hasan. The columns 
of this temple are little more than bases. They are nearly all of the 
same height: some like mere heaps of stone; others bearing unin- 
jured inscriptions. They are small remains : but long may they last ! 
They are the ultimate record of their kind on the ordinary route of 
Nile travelers, and usually the first subject to their examination. 

Our ride to the rock of Abooseer occupied an hour and a half. 
Thanks to the cool north wind, we highly enjoyed it. Our way lay 
through a complete desert, over sand hills, and among stony tracts, 
where scarcely a trace of vegetation is to be seen. In such places 
the coloquintus is a welcome object, with its thick, milky leaves and 
stalks, and its velvet blossom. The creeping, thorny coloquintida, too, 
with its bitter apples, is a handsome plant : or it looked so to us, in 

* Herodotus tells us (II. 128) that the Egyptians so hated the Pharaohs who 
built the two largest pyramids, that they M-ould not pronounce their names; but 
called those edifices " by the name of the shepherd Philitis, who in those times led 
his flocks to pasture in their neighborhood." Is the slyness of this notice attributable 
to the priests or tlie prudential historian ? 



ROCK OF ABOOSEER. 



87 



the absence of others. Here and there amidst the dreary expanse, or 
half hidden in some sandy dell, lay the bleached skeleton of a camel. 
The only living things seen were a brood of partridges and a jerboa, — 
a graceful and most agile little creature, whose long extended tail, with 
its tufted end, gave it a most distinctive appearance. Some of our 
people started off in pursuit, and would not give up for a long time, 
making extreme efforts to keep the little creature in view, and drive 
it in one another's way; but it baffled them at last, and got back to 
its hole. 

We rode to the foot of the rock of Abooseer, and then ascended 
it — in rather heavy spirits, knowing that this was to be our last look 
southwards. The summit was breezy and charming. I looked down 
the precipice on which I stood, and saw a sheer descent to the Nile 
of two hundred feet. The waters were gushing past the foot of this 
almost perpendicular crag: and from holes in its strata flew out flocks 
of pigeons, blue in the sunshine. The scene all round under that 
wide heaven was wild beyond description. There was no moving 
creature visible but ourselves and the pigeons; and no trace of human 
habitation but the ruins of two mud huts, and of a white building on 
the Arabian shore. The whole scene was composed of desert, river, 
and black basaltic rocks. Round to the north, from the south-west, 
there is actually nothing to be seen but blackish, sand-streaked rocks 
near at hand, and sandy desert further off. To the north-east, the 
river winds away, blue and full, between sands. Two white sails 
were on it at the moment. From the river, a level sand extended 
to the soft-tinted Arabian hills, whose varied forms and broken lights 
and shadows were on the horizon nearly from the north round to the 
south-east. These level sands then give place to a black rugged sur- 
face, which extends to where two summits, — to-day of a bright amethyst 
hue, — close the circuit of vision. These summits are at a considerable 
distance on the way to Dongola. The river is hidden among the black 
rocks to the south, and its course is not traceable till it peeps out, blue 
and bright, in two or three places, and hides itself again among the 
islets. It makes a great bend while thus hidden, and reappears much 
more to the east. It has now reached the part properly called the 
Second Cataract; and it comes sweeping down towards the rock on 
which we stood, dashing and driving among its thousand islets, and 
then gathering its thousand currents into one, to proceed calmly on its 
course. Its waters were turbid in the rapids, and looked as muddy 
where they poured down from shelf or boulder as in the Delta itself ; 
but in all its calm reaches it reflected the sky in a blue so deep as it 
would not do to paint. The islets were of fantastic forms, — worn by 
the cataracts of ages : but still, the outlines were angular, and the black 
ledges were graduated by the action of the waters, as if they had been 
soft sand. On one or two islands I saw what I at first took for millet- 
patches : but they were only coarse grass and reeds. A sombre 
brownish tamarisk, or dwarfed mimosa, put up its melancholy head 
here and there ; and this was all the vegetation apparent within that 
wide horizon. — I doubt whether a more striking scene than this, to 



88 



EASTERN LIFE. 



English eyes, can be anywhere found. It is thoroughly African, 
thoroughly tropical, very beautiful, — most majestic, and most desolate. 
Something of the impression might be owing to the circumstances of 
leave-taking under which we looked abroad from our station: but still, 
if I saw this scene in an unknown land in a dream, I am sure I should 
be powerfully moved by it. This day, it certainly interested me more 
than the First Cataract. 

I was tempted by the invitation of a sort of cairn on the top of a 
hill not far inland, to go there ; and thence I obtained another glimpse 
of the Lybian Desert, and saw two more purple peaks rising west- 
wards, soft and clear. 

There is a host of names carved on the accessible side of Abooseer. 
We looked with interest on Belzoni's and some few others. We cut 
ours with a nail and hammer. Here, and here only, I left my name. 
On this wild rock, and at the limit of our range of travel, it seemed 
not only natural, but right to some who may come after us. Our names 
will not be found in any temple or tomb. If we ever do such a thing, 
may our names be publicly held up to shame, as I am disposed to 
publish those of the carvers and scribblers who have forfeited their 
right to privacy by inscribing their names where they can never be 
effaced ! 

The time arrived when we must go. It was with a heavy heart 
that I quitted the rock, turned my back on the south, and rode away. 

We found our boat prepared in the usual manner for the descent of 
the river — the mainmast removed, and laid along overhead, to support 
the awning ; the kitchen shifted and turned ; and the planks of the 
decks taken up to form seats for the rowers, so as sadly to restrict our 
small space. One of our dishes at dinner was an excellent omelette, 
made of part of the contents of an ostrich's egg. Two of these eggs 
were bought for six piastres, {Is. 2d.) The contents were obtained 
by boring a hole with a gimlet. The contents of this egg were found 
to be equal to twenty-nine of the small hen's eggs of this part of the 
country. 

We began our return voyage about 6 p. m., floating, sometimes 
broadside down, and sometimes in towards the bank, when it became 
the business of the rowers to bring us out again into the middle of the 
stream. The wind was hostile, cold, and strong enough to be inces- 
santly shoving us aside. Our progress was very slow. The first night 
we moored at six miles only from Wadee Haifa. 

The next evening (January 6th) we were within half an hour of 
Aboo-Simbil, when duty ordered me to my cabin. When I left the 
deck, the moon had risen, the rocks were closing in, and the river was 
like a placid lake. 

In the morning we were to enter upon a new kind of life, as travel- 
ers. We were to begin our course of study of the Monuments. 



ANCIENT HISTORIES. 



89 



CHAPTER IX. 

HISTORICAL SKETCH, FROM MENES TO THE ROMAN OCCUPATION 

OF EGYPT. 

Before entering upon the study of the Monuments, it seems neces- 
sary to obtain something like an orderly view of the state of the coun- 
try before and during their erection. At best, our conceptions must 
be obscure enough ; but we can form none unless we arrange in our 
minds what we know of the history of Egypt, of which these monu- 
ments are at once the chief evidence and the eternal illustration. 

The early history of Egypt differs from that of every other ex- 
plored country in the nature of its records. Elsewhere, we derive all 
our knowledge from popular legends, which embody the main ideas to 
be preserved in forms which are not, and were never meant to be his- 
torically true. It is the business of the philosophical historian to 
separate the true ideas from their environment of fiction, and to mark 
the time when the narrative, from being mythical becomes historically 
true — to classify the two orders of ancient historians — both inestima- 
ble in their way — the Poets who perpetuate national Ideas, and the 
Historians who perpetuate national Facts. With regard to Egypt, we 
are in possession of as much of this early material as any nation has 
furnished; and we have the monuments besides. 

These monuments consist of buildings or excavations — of the sculp- 
tures upon them — and of their inscriptions. From the edifices or caves 
we may learn much of the condition, mind, and manners of the people 
who wrought them, and, if their dates can be obtained, in historical 
order. From their sculptures we may learn much of the personages, 
divine and human, about whom they thought most ; and their inscrip- 
tions are of inestimable use in identifying these personages, and in de- 
claring their dates. Being thus in possession of mythical legends, of 
the writings of historians, and of edifices and excavations covered with 
sculptures and inscriptions, we are as well supplied with records of the 
early history of Egypt as we can probably ever be with regard to any 
ancient people ; and better than we yet are with regard to any other 
of the nations of the old world. 

The legends relating to ancient Egypt are preserved in the works of 
its historians. It is the business of modern inquirers to separate them 
from the true historical material, and to extract from them, where pos- 
sible, the essential Ideas which they embody. 

The chief historians of Egypt are Hecataeus of Miletus, who was 
at Thebes about half a century before Herodotus, and some fragments 
of whose writings have come down to us : — Herodotus, from whom 
we learn more than from any other : — the writer of the book of Gene- 
sis : — Hecataeus of Abdera, from whose narrative extracts may be found 



90 



EASTERN LIFE. 



in the works of Diodorus Siculus — Manetho, an Egyptian, of whom 
also we have only extracts in other authors ; but who supplies very 
valuable information — Eratosthenes of Cyrene, whose writings are at 
once illustrative of those of Manetho and a check upon them ; Diodo- 
rus Siculus, who traveled in Egypt, and wrote a history of it, rather 
more than half a century before the Christian era; Strabo, who has 
left us a full account of what he saw in Egypt, between Alexandria 
and the First Cataract — and Abdallatif, an Arabian physician, who sup- 
plies a valuable report of the state of the Nile Valley and its people 
when he visited them in the twelfth century. It is the business of 
modern inquirers to separate what these historians derived from the 
depositories of the national mythi from what they personally observed ; 
to compare their works with one another, and to apply them as a key 
(where this can be done), to the monumental records. 

As to the use of the monumental records, several precautions are ne- 
cesary. Modern inquirers must beware of interpreting what they see 
by their own favorite ideas, — as travelers do who contrive to see He- 
brew groups among the Egyptian sculptures : — they must diligently 
and patiently work out the knowledge of the ancient language and its 
signs, and beware of strainin^ the little they know of these, to accom- 
modate any historical theti^ vney may carry in their minds : — and they 
must remember that the edifice and its sculptures are not always of the 
same date, and that therefore what is true of the one is not necessarily 
true of the other. 

Without going into any detail (which would fill a volume if entered 
upon at all) about the respective values of these authorities, and their 
agreements and conflicts, I may give a slight sketch of what competent 
modern inquirers believe we have learned from them. 

For our first glimpse into ancient Egyptian life we must go back upon 
the track of Time far further than we have been accustomed to sup- 
pose that track to extend. People who had believed all their lives 
that the globe and man were created together, were starded when the 
new science of geology revealed to them the great fact that man is a 
comparatively new creation on the earth, whose oceans and swamps 
and jungles were aforetime inhabited by monsters never seen by human 
eye but in their fossil remains. People who enter Egypt with the be- 
lief that the human race has existed only six thousand years, and that 
at that date, the world was uninhabited by men, except within a small 
circuit in Asia, must undergo a somewhat similar revolution of ideas. 
All new research operates to remove further back the date of the forma- 
tion of the Egyptian empire. The difl^erences between the dates given 
by legendary records and by modern research (with the help of cotem- 
porary history) are very great : but the one agrees as little as the other 
with the popular notion that the human race is only six thousand years 
old. 

When Hecataeus of Miletus was at Thebes, about 500 B. C, he 
spoke, as Herodotus tells us,* to the priests of Amun, of his genealogy, 



Herod. II. 143. 



CHRONOLOGIES. 



91 



declaring himself to be the sixteenth in descent from a god. Upon 
this, the priest conducted him into a great building of the temple, where 
they pointed out to him (as afterwards to Herodotus) the statues of 
their high priests. Each high priest placed a colossal wooden statue 
of himself in this place during his life ; and each was the son of his 
predecessor. The priests would not admit that any of these was the 
son of a god. From first to last they were of human origin ; and here 
in direct lineal succession, were 345. Taking the average length of 
human life, how many thousand years would be occupied by the suc- 
cession of 345 high priests, in a direct line from father to son ! Ac- 
cording to the priests, it was nearly 5000 years from the time of Horus. 
They further informed Herodotus that gods did reign in Egypt before 
they deputed their power to mortals.* They spoke of eight gods who 
reigned first, — among whom was one answering to Pan of the Greeks; 
then came twelve of another series : and again, twelve more, the off- 
spring of the second series : and of these Osiris was one ; and it was 
not till after the reign of his son Horus that the first of these 345 high 
priests came into power. From Osiris to king Amasis, the priests 
reckoned 15,000 years, declaring that they had exact registers of the 
successive lives which had filled up the fr''Tie.t Such is the legendary 
history, as it existed 500 years before ChrAu We can gather from it 
thus much, — that the priests then looked back upon a long reach of 
time, and believed the art of registering to be of an old date. 

Here we have the earliest report of dates offered us. According to 
the latest researches,:]: we cannot place the formation of the Egyptian 
empire under Menes, nearer to us than 5500 years ago. And the 
Egyptians were then a civilized people, subject to legislation and exe- 
cutive authority, pursuing trade, and capable of the arts. A longer or 
shorter series of centuries must be allotted for bringing them up to this 
state, according to the views of the students of social life : but the 
shortest must bring us back to the current date of the creation of man. 
How these five or six thousand years are filled up, we may see here- 
after. 

Leaving it to my readers to fix for themselves the point of time for 
our survey of the most ancient period of Egyptian history, I may be 
permitted to appoint the place. Let us take our stand above the Se- 
cond Cataract ; — on the rock of Abooseer, perhaps, where I could only 
look over southwards, and not go and learn. This is a good station, 
because it is a sort of barrier between two chains of monuments : a fron- 
tier resting-place, whence one may survey the area of ancient Egyp- 
tian civilization from end to end. 

Looking down the river, northwards, beyond the Nubian region 
(then Ethiopia) beyond the First Cataract, and far away over the great 
marsh which occupied the Nile valley, we see, coming out of the dark- 
ness of oblivion, Menes, the first Egyptian king, turning the river from 
its course under the Lybian mountain into a new bed, in the middle of 



* Herod. II. 144, 146. t Ibid. 145. 

J Bunsen. " Egypt's Place in the World's History." 



92 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the valley.* Thus the priests of Thebes told Herodotus ; saying that 

Menes made the dykes, by which the land was reclaimed, on which 
Memphis afterwards stood. It must strike every one that this period, 
5500 years ago, must have been one of an advanced civilization ; such 
a work as this embankment requiring scientific ideas and methods, 
apt tools, and trained men. The priests ascribed to this same king the 
building of Memphis, and of the great temple of Phthah (answering 
to Vulcan) in that city. They read to Herodotus a long list of sove- 
reigns (three hundred and thirty) who succeeded Menes ; of whom 
one was an Egyptian woman, and eighteen were Ethiopian kings.t 
That there should have been a temple of Phthah implies the establish- 
ment of a priesthood. That a woman should have occupied the 
throne, seems to imply the establishment of a principle of hereditary 
succession ; or at least, it tells of the subordination, in this early age, 
of force to authority. That there should have been Ethiopian sove- 
reigns among the Egyptian implies a relation between the two coun- 
tries, whether of warfare or commerce. During all this time, the plain 
of Thebes lay bare. 

The next sovereignty that was established in the valley was at This, 
about sixty miles below Thebes. A succession of monarchs reigned 
here — some say sixteen, some more — while the plain of Thebes still 
lay bare. 

While these sovereigns were reigning at This, and before Thebes 
was heard of, the kings of Memphis were building the Pyramids of 
Geezeh. It is certain that the builders of these pyramids were learned 
men. How much science is requisite for tlie erection of such edifices 
need hardly be pointed out; — the mathematical skill and accuracy; 
the astronomical science shown in the placing of them true to the car- 
dinal points ; the command of mechanical powers which are at this day 
unknown to us ; and the arts of writing and decoration shown in the 
inscriptions which covered their outside in the days of Herodotus,! 
though the casing which contained them is now destroyed. In the 
neighboring tombs, however, we have evidence, as will be shown here- 
after, of the state of some of the arts at that date : and I may mention 
here that the sign of the inkstand and reed-pen are among the repre- 
sentations in the tombs. There is no doubt as to who built the Pyra- 
mids. Colonel Howard Vyse found the kings' names inscribed in 
them. When the Pyramids were built, it was a thousand years be- 
fore Abraham was born, and the plain of Thebes still lay bare. 

Now we must turn southwards, and look over as far as Dongola. 
For a long way above the Second Cataract, there are no monuments. 
This is probably owing to the river not being navigable there, so that 
there were no trading stations. There are obvious reasons why tem- 
ples and other monuments should rise where commerce halts, where 
men congregate, and desire protection of person and property, and ex- 
ercise their social passions and affections. So, for the twenty-five 
days' journey where the river is impracticable, there are no monuments. 



Herod. II. 99. 



t Ibid. 100. 



X Ibid. 125. 



THE SHEPHERD KINGS. 



93 



Then some occur of rather a modern date: and far beyond them — up 
in Dongola — we come upon traces of a time when men were traffick- 
ing, building, and worshiping, while yet the plain of Thebes lay bare. 
To this point did the sovereigns of Memphis and of This extend their 
hand of power ; erecting statues as memorials of themselves, and by 
their subjects, trading in such articles of use and luxury as they de- 
rived from the east. While the Ethiopian subjects of these early Pha- 
raohs were building up that character for piety and probity which 
spread over the world, and found its way into the earliest legends and 
poems of distant nations, the plain of Thebes still lay wild and bare; 
— not one stone yet placed upon another. 

And now, the time had arrived for the Theban kings to arise, give 
glory to the close of the Old Monarchy, and preserve the national name 
and existence during the thousand years of foreign domination which 
were to follow. In the course of reigns at which we have now ar- 
rived, El-Karnac began to show its massive buildings, and the plain of 
Thebes to present temptation to a foreign conqueror. 

We have now arrived at the end of the First great Period of ascer- 
tained Egyptian history ; — a period supposed, from astronomical cal- 
culation and critical research, to comprehend 889 years. A dark and 
humiliating season was now drawing on. 

Considering the great wealth and power of the kings now reigning 
at Memphis and at Thebes, we are obliged to form a high opinion of 
the strength of the Shepherd Race who presently subdued Egypt. 
Whence they came, no one seems to know — further than that it was 
somewhere from the East. Whether they were Assyrians, as some 
have conjectured, or the Phoenicians who were encroaching upon the 
Delta at a subsequent time, or some third party, we cannot learn, the 
Egyptians having always, as is natural, kept silence about them. The 
pride of the Egyptians was in their agriculture and commerce ; and to 
be conquered by a pastoral people, whose business lay anywhere 
among the plains of the earth, rather than in the richly-tilled, narrow 
valley of the Nile, was a hard stroke of adversity for them. So, in 
their silence, all that we know of their strong enemy is that the Shep- 
herd Race took Memphis, put garrisons in all the strong places of 
Egypt, made the kings of Memphis and Thebes tributary to them, and 
held their empire for 929 years : that is, for a time equal to that which 
extends from the death of our King Alfred to our own ; a long season 
of subjugation, from which it is wonderful that the native Egyptian 
race should have revived. This dark season, during which the native 
kings were not absolutely dethroned, but depressed and made tributary, 
is commonly called the Middle Monarchy. It is supposed to extend 
from B. c. 2754 to b. c. 182.5. 

About this time, a visitor arrived in Egypt, and remained a short 
while, whose travels are interesting to us, and whose appearance 
affords a welcome rest to the imagination, after its wanderings in the 
dim regions of these old ages. The richest of the Phoenicians who 
found themselves restricted for room and pasturage by the numbers of 
Chaldeans who moved westwards into Syria, found their way, through 



94 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Arabia, to the abundance of corn which Lower Egypt afforded. 
Among these was Abraham, a man of such wealth and distinction that 
he and his followers were entertained as guests at Memphis, and his 
wife was lodged in the palace of the king. He must have looked up 
at the Pyramids, and learned some of the particulars which we, follow- 
ing on his traces, long in vain to know : — how they were reared, and 
for what purpose precisely ; and perhaps many details of the progress 
of the work. It is true, these pyramids had then stood somewhere 
about 1500 years : the builders, tens of thousands in number, had 
slept for many centuries in their graves; the kings who had reared 
them lay embalmed in the stillness of ages, and the glory of a supre- 
macy w^hich had passed away; and these edifices had become so 
familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants, that they were like natural fea- 
tures of the landscape : but as Abraham walked round those vast 
bases, and looked up at the smooth pictured surfaces of their sides, he 
might have had explained to him those secrets of ancient civilization 
which we seek to pry into in vain. 

We now come to the brilliant Third Period. 

The Theban kings had been growing in strength for some time ; and 
at length they were able to rise up against the Shepherd Race, and 
expel them from Memphis, and afterwards from their stronghold, 
Abaris. On the surrender of this last place, the enemy were permitted 
to march out of the country in safety, — the number of their men being 
recorded as 240,000. The period of 1300 years now entered upon 
was the grandest of Egyptian history, — if, we may add, the Sesostris 
of old renown was, as some recent students have supposed, the Ra- 
mases II. of this Period. Some high authorities, as Lepsius and Bun- 
sen, believe Sesostris to have belonged to the Old Monarchy. How- 
ever this may be, all agree that the deeds of many heroes are attributed 
to the one who now bears the name of Sesostris ; and the achievements 
of Ramases the Great are quite enough to glorify his age, whether he 
had a predecessor like himself or not. Of these achievements I shall 
say nothing here, as they will come before us quite often enough in 
our study of the temples. Suffice it that the empire of Egypt was ex- 
tended by conquest southwards to Abyssinia ; westward over Lybia ; 
northwards over Greece ; and eastwards beyond the banks of the Gan- 
ges. The rock statues and stelae of Sesostris may yet be seen in coun- 
tries far apart, but within this range : his Babylonian captives were 
employed on some of the great edifices w^e have seen, and were after- 
wards permitted to build a city^ for themselves near the point of the 
Delta : and the tributary kings and chiefs of all the conquered coun- 
tries were required to come up to Egypt once a year, to pay homage 
by drawing the conqueror's chariot, in return for which they received 
gifts and favor. The kings of Lower Egypt appear to have declined 
about this period ; if even they were not tributary to those of Upper 
Egypt. Of these kings, one was he who received Joseph into favor,* 
and made him his prime minister ; and another was he who after- 



* Supposed about b. c. 170G. 



THIRD PERIOD. 



95 



wards " knew not Joseph." Of Joseph's administration of the affairs 
of Lower Egypt we know more than of the rule of any other minister 
of the Pharaohs. I have walked upon the mounds which cover 
the streets of Memphis, through which Joseph rode, on occasion of 
his investiture, and where the king's servants ran before him, to bid 
the people bow the knee. And when at Heliopolis, I was on the 
spot where he married his wife, — the daughter of the priest and gover- 
nor of On, afterwards Heliopolis. 

It was in the early part of this Third Period of the Egyptian Mon- 
archy that Cecrops is supposed (fable being here mingled with history) 
to have led a colony from Sais, and to have founded the kingdom of 
Athens,* beginning here the long series of obligations that Greece, and 
through Greece Rome and the world, have been under to Egypt. It 
is almost overpowering to the imagination to contemplate the vast an- 
tiquity of the Egyptian empire, already above two thousand years, in 
the day when Cecrops was training his band of followers, to lead them 
in search of a place whereon to build Athens ; — in a day long preced- 
ing that when Ceres was wandering about the earth in search of her 
daughter. 

It was about this time that a still more important event than even 
the founding of Athens had taken place. We all know how a certain 
Egyptian lady went out one day to bathe, and what was found by her 
maidens in a rushy spot on the banks of the Nile. That lady was the 
daughter of one of the Pharaohs of Memphis, at a time, (as some think,) 
shortly before the union on one head of the crowns of Upper and 
Lower Egypt. When she brought home the child found among the 
rushes, she little thought that that infant head was to become the organ 
of a wisdom that should eclipse the glory of Sesostris, and mainly de- 
termine the spiritual destinies of the human race, for a longer course 
of centuries than even Egypt had yet seen. 

When the Shepherd Kings and their army were driven out of Egypt, 
many of their people remained as slaves, and were employed on the 
public works. The Hebrews were also thus employed ; — latterly on 
the fortifications of Thoum and Heliopolis ; and the Egyptians con- 
founded the two races of aliens in a common hatred. From the pre- 
valence of leprosy among, the Hebrews, and other causes, they were 
considered an unclean people ; and they were sent by the Pharaoh of 
their day, under the warning of the priests, to live by themselves in 
the district allotted to them. Whether the Pharaoh who opposed the 
departure of this army of slaves was Thothmes HI., or his son, Amu- 
noph II., or some later king, is undetermined ; but it is believed on 
high authority that it was Thothmes III.,t and that he reigned many 
years after the Exodus. The date of the Exodus is agreed upon as 
about B. c. 1491, whoever was the Pharaoh reigning at the time. 
There is no assertion in the Mosaic narrative, that Pharaoh himself 
was lost in the Red Sea,j:nor that the whole of his host perished : nor 
is there any allusion in the Song of Moses to the death of the sovereign: 



* B. c. 1556, t Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I. p. 54. $ Ibid., 1. p. 55. 



96 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and some of the Hebrew traditions declare* that Pharaoh survived, and 
extended his conquests afterwards into Assyria. Thus the supposi- 
tion that the Israelites raarched out in the early year of the reign of 
this monarch is not irreconcilable with his having reigned thirty-nine 
years, as Egyptian history declares that he did. Manetho mentions 
their numbers to have been eighty thousand when they were sent to 
live by themselves : and it is curious on this account, and on some 
others, to find the number assigned by the Mosaic history so high as 
§ix hundred thousand, besides women and children. Even if we sup- 
pose a proportion of these to have been their fellow-slaves of the Shep- 
herd Race, who, being confounded with the Hebrews by their masters, 
took this opportunity of leaving the country, it gives us a high idea of 
the power and population of Egypt in those days that such a body 
could be abstracted from the working class of the country, and leave 
behind a sufficient force for the achievement of such wars and arts 
as we know were prosecuted after their departure.! 

As our chief interest in Egypt was till lately from its being the scene 
of the early life of the Hebrew nation, we are apt to look for records of 
the Hebrews on the monuments wherever we go. I am convinced 
that none have been found relating to their connection with Egypt : — 
none relating to them at all, till the long subsequent time when Jeru- 
salem was conquered by Sheshonk (Shishak). In my opinion, it 
would be more surprising if there had been such records than that there 
are not. There is nothing in the presence of a body of slaves to require 
or suggest a monumental record, unless those slaves were made so by 
conquest, and had previously been a nation. The Hebrews were not 
a nation, and had no dream of being so till Moses began the mighty 
work of making them one. When they had a confirmed national ex- 
istence; when their great King Solomon had married into the line of 
the Pharaohs, and their national interests came into collision with those 
of Egypt, we find them, among other nations, in the train of the cap- 
tives of Sheshonk, on the walls of El-Karnac. Some Hebrew names 
among those of the Egyptian months,! and a sprinkling of Hebrew 
words in the Coptic language (which might have found their way there 
afterwards), are, I believe, the only traceable memorials in Egypt of the 
residence of the Israelites. 

According to Pliny, one of the Ramases was on the throne of Egypt 
when Troy was taken : and within thirty years of that time. King 
Solomon married a daughter of one of the Pharaohs. — How great The- 
bes had long been is clear from the mention of Upper Egypt in Homer, 
who says, perhaps truly enough in one sense, that it was the birthplace 
of some of the Greek gods ; and that its inhabitants were so wise as to 

* Pictorial History of Palestine, I. p. 186. 

t It is probable that no one will contend for the accuracy of the numbers as they 
stand in the Mosaic history ; for, taking the longest term assigned for the residence 
of the Hebrews in Egypt, — 430 years, — and supposing the most rapid rate of in- 
crease known in the world, their numbers could not have amounted to one-third of 
that assigned. 

J Sharpe's History of Egypt, p. 37. ^ 



I 



GREEK INFLUENCES. 



97 



be favorites, and even hosts of those gods. It was with these wise 
Thebans (then one with the Ethiopians) that Jupiter and his family 
were supposed by the Greeks to be making holiday, when out of reach, 
as it seemed, of the prayers of the besiegers of Troy. — The Theban 
family of monarchs, however, was by this lime declining in power; 
and after a century or two of v/eakness, they were displaced by stronger 
men from a higher station up the river ; and Egypt was governed by 
princes from the hitherto subordinate province of Ethiopia. In three 
generations, Thebes ceased to be the capital of Egypt; and the seat of 
government was removed to Sai's in the Delta. Tiiis event happened 
nearly 700 years b. c. From this time, we have the advantage of cer- 
tainty of dates, within, at least, the range of a few months. We have 
come down to the record of Babylonian eclipses, and the skies light up 
the history of the earth. 

It was in this age that the downfall of old Egypt was provided for by 
the introduction of Greek influences into the Delta, at the time when 
the seat of sovereignty was there. While the national throne stood at 
Thebes, the religion, philosophy, learning and language of the ancient 
race could be little, if at all, affected by what was doing in other parts 
of the world : but when the Thebaid became a province, and the me- 
tropolis was open to visits from the voyagers of the Mediterranean, the 
exclusively Egyptian character began to give way ; and while Egypt 
furnished, through these foreigners, the religion, philosophy, and art of 
the whole civilized world, she was beginning to lose the nationality 
which was her strength. Nechepsus, one of the kings of Sals, was a 
learned priest, and wrote on astronomy. His writings were in the 
Greek language. The kings of Sai's now began to employ Greek mer- 
cenaries. Psammitichus I. not only employed as soldiers large num- 
bers of Ionian and Carian immigrants, but, as Herodotus tells us,* 
committed to them the children of the Egyptians, to be taught Greek, 
and gave them lands and other advantages for settlement in the Delta. 
Of course, this was displeasing to his native subjects, and the national 
unity was destroyed. One curious circumstance occurred under this 
king, which reveals much of the popular temper, and which has left 
some remarkable traces behind it, — as will be seen in my next chapter. 
Psammitichus placed three armies of Egyptians on the three frontiers 
of Egypt.! That on the southern frontier, stationed at Elephantine, 
grew impatient, after a neglect of three years. Finding their petitions 
for removal unanswered, and their pay not forthcoming, they resolved 
to emigrate, and away they marched, up the river, as far beyond Meroe 
as Meroe is beyond Elephantine, — and there lands were given them, 
where their descendants were found, three centuries afterwards. The 
king himself pursued and overtook them, and endeavored by promises 
and prayers, and by appeals to them not to forsake their gods and their 
homes, to induce them to return. They told him, however, that they 
would make homes for themselves, and marched on. Their numbers 
being, as Herodotus tells, two hundred and forty thousand men, it was 



* Herod. XL 154. 

7 



t Ibid. 30. 



98 



EASTERN LIFE. 



impossible to constrain them. The king took with him a force of 
Greek mercenaries, whom he sent some way, as we shall see by and 
by, after the deserters ; but it appears that he did not go higher than 
Elephantine. 

While we thus see how Egypt became weakened in preparation for 
downfall, it is pretty clear, on the other hand, how the process went on 
by which the rest of the world became enlightened by her knowledge, 
and ripened by her wisdom. 

About thirty years after Sai's became the capital of Egypt, the first 
of the Wise Men of Greece, Thales, was born. He went to Egypt to 
improve his knowledge, — and remarkable, indeed, was the knowledge 
he brought away. He was the first Greek who predicted an eclipse. He 
forewarned his Ionian countrymen of that celebrated eclipse which, 
when it happened, suspended the battle between the Medes and Ly- 
dians. It was Thales, we are told, who, after his return from Egypt, 
fixed the sun's orbit, or determined the duration of the year to be 36.5 
days. It was in Egypt that he obtained his knowledge of Geometry : 
and he it was who imparted, on his return, the great discovery that the 
angle in a semicircle is always a right angle. In Egypt he ascertained 
the elevation of the pyramids by observing the shadows of measurable 
objects in relation to their height. His connection with Egypt gives us 
a new interest in his theories of creation or existence. He gave the 
name of Life to every active principle, as we should call it; and in this 
sense, naturally declared that the universe was "full of gods." At the 
same time, he is reported by tradition to have said, "The most ancient 
of things existing is God ; for he is uncreated: the most beautiful thing 
is the universe, for it is God's creation." Men in Greece wondered at 
him for saying what would not surprise even the common men in 
Egypt in his day, that Death does not differ from Life. 

About the same time came a sober thinking man from Greece to 
Egypt, to exchange a cargo of olive-oil from Athens for Egyptian corn 
and luxuries from the east. After this thoughtful man had done his 
commercial business, he remained to see what he could of the country 
and people. He conversed much with a company of priests at Sais, 
who taught him, as Plato tells us, much history, and some geography, 
and evidently not a litde of law. His countrymen profited on his re- 
turn by his studies at Sai's ; for this oil-merchant was Solon the law- 
maker. One of his laws is assigned immediately to an Egyptian 
origin ; that by which every man was required to give an account to 
the magistrate of his means of livelihood. As for the geography which 
Solon might learn at Sai's, there is the testimony of Herodotus that 
King Necho, the predecessor of Psammitichus I., sent a maritime ex- 
pedition by the Red Sea, which circumnavigated Africa, and returned 
by the Pillars of Hercules.* Plato tells ust that one of Solon's priesdy 
friends, Sonchis, told him of some Atlantic isles, beyond the Pillars of 

* Herod. IV, 42. A strong indication of the truth of this story is found in the 
simple remark of Herodotus that he cannot believe the navigators in one of their 
assertions, — that they had the sun on their right hand. 

j- In Critias. 



PYTHAGORAS CLOSE OF THIRD PERIOD. 



99 



Hercules, which were larger than Asia and Africa united. This sets 
one thinking whether the Egyptians had not some notion of the exist- 
ence of America. 

Within seventy years or so of Solon's visit to Egypt, a truly great 
man followed on his traces. Pythagoras was unsatisfied with all that 
could be learned from teachers at home, — from Thales downwards, — 
and went to Egypt to study philosophy and morals. He was intro- 
duced to King Amasis at Sals by letters from Polycrates. There is no 
saying how much of the philosophy of Pythagoras is derived, and how 
much original: nor, of that which is derived, how much he owed to 
intercourse with the sages of Chaldaea and other countries. But I think 
no one who has felt an interest in the study of what is known of the 
Pythagorean philosophy, can fail to be reminded of the philosopher at 
every step in those chambers of the tombs at Thebes which relate to 
life and death subjects. Where the paintings treat of the constitution 
of things, the regions which the soul of man may inhabit, and the states 
through which it may pass, one feels that Pythagoras might have been 
the designer of them, if he were not a learner from them. I strongly 
suspect it would be found, if the truth could be known, that more of 
the spiritual religion, the abstruse philosophy, and the lofty ethics and 
political views of the old Egyptians have found their way into the gene- 
ral mind of our race through Pythagoras than by any or all other chan- 
nels, except perhaps the institutions of Moses, and the speculations of 
Plato. Some traditions, among the many which exist in relation to 
this, the first man who assumed the title of philosopher, report him to 
have lived twenty years in the Nile valley ; and then to have been 
carried off prisoner to Babylon, on the Persian invasion of Egypt. 

This brings us near to the close of the great Third Period of Egyptian 
history. Before the Persians came, however, Hecataeus of Miletus, 
mentioned before as the earliest historical authority, went up to Thebes. 
I have spoken already of what he saw and heard there. 

Cyrus was meanwhile meditating a renewal of the old wars between 
Babylon and Egypt, which had formerly been all to the glory of the 
Pharaohs. Before his death, Cyrus took Cyprus from the Egyptians: 
and he bequeathed the task of conquering Egypt itself to his son Cara- 
byses. — The wise and fortunate King Amasis died before Cambyses 
reached Egypt: and with him, the third period of Egyptian history 
may be said to have expired; for his son Psammenitus could make so 
little resistance, that he had completed his surrender to the foolish and 
cruel conqueror before he had been on the throne six months. 

We have now reached the mournful close of the great Third Period 
of Egyptian history ; and there is little to dwell on in the succeeding 
two hundred years, when Egypt was a province of Persia. Upper 
Egypt never rose again. If there had been any strength or spirit left 
in her, she might have driven out Cambyses ; for his folly left him 
open to almost any kind or degree of resistance from man or nature. 
Nature did her utmost to avenge the conquered people : but they could 
not help themselves. Cambyses set out for Ethiopia with his Per- 
sians, leaving his Greek troops to defend the Delta : but he made no 



100 



EASTERN LIFE. 



provision for his long march southwards ; and his soldiers, after ex- 
hausting the country, and killing their beasts of burden for food, began 
to slay one another, casting lots for one victim in ten of their number.* 
The army of fifty thousand men, whom he had raised in the valley, in 
order to conquer the Desert, — that is, to take the Oases, and burn the 
temple of the Oracle, — were never heard of more. Whether they 
perished by thirst, or were overtaken by the sand, was never known. 
So, all that the conqueror could do was to lay waste Thebes, where it 
appears there was now no one to stay his hand. He carried off its 
treasures of gold, silver and ivory, broke open and robbed the Tombs of 
the Kings, threw down what he could of the temple buildings, and 
hewed in pieces such of the colossal statues as were not too strong 
for the brute force of his army. It was then, if Pausanias says true, 
that the vocal statue, the eastern-most of the pair, was shattered and 
overthrown from the waist: after which, however, it still gave out its 
gentle music to the morning sun. On the return of Cambyses to 
Memphis,! he found the people rejoicing in the investiture of a new 
bull Apis, which had been found qualified to succeed the one which 
had died. He was angry at any rejoicing while he was baffled and 
unfortunate; asked how it was that they showed no joy when he was 
there before, and so much now when he had lost the chief part of his 
army ; put to death the magistrates who informed him of the occasion 
of the festival ; with his own hand stabbed the bull, and ordered the 
priests to be scourged.! Here again he broke open the tombs, and 
desecrated the temples. Meantime, the valley swarmed with strangers, 
who came in embassy from every part of the wide Persian dominion, 
to offer congratulation and magnificent presents, on the conquest of 
Egypt. — Yet this new province never became an easy possession. 
One revolt followed another; and the valley was a scene of almost 
continual conflict during the two hundred years of its nominal subserv- 
ience to Persia. Its conquest by Cambyses took place in 525 b.c. 

It was only during an occasional revolt that any one from Athens 
could set foot in Egypt : for the great war between the Greeks and 
Persians was now going on. Anaxagoras was born 500 b. c, and he 
was therefore ten years old at the time of the battle of Marathon ; and 
nineteen when that of Salamis was fought. But when he was forty 
years of age, Egypt became accessible for four years, by means of a 
revolt. During this time, though the Persians were never dislodged 
from Memphis, both Lower and Upper Egypt appeared to have become 
independent; and many Greeks, bent on the advancement of learning, 
and Anaxagoras among them, hastened to the Egyptian schools. Anaxa- 
goras's work on the Nile has perished with his other writings: and 
there is no saying how much of his philosophy he derived from the 
teachings of the Egyptian priests : but there is a striking accordance 
between the opinions which he is variously reported to have held, and 
for which he is believed to have suffered banishment, and those which 
constituted part of the philosopy of Egypt. Wherever we turn, in 



* Herod. III. 25. 



t Ibid. 27. 



X Ibid. 29. 



HERODOTUS PLATO. 



101 



tracing the course of ancient philosophy, we meet the priests of Egypt: 
and it really appears as if the great men of Greece and other countries 
had little to say on the highest and deepest subjects of human inquiry, 
till they had studied at Memphis, or Sa'i's, or Thebes, or Heliopolis. 
Here was the master of Socrates,* the originator of some of his most 
important opinions, and the great mover of his mind, studying in Egypt; 
and we shall hereafter find the great pupil of Socrates, and the inter- 
preter of his mind, Plato, dwelling in the same school, for so long a 
time, it is thought, as to show in what reverence he held it. 

Soon after Anaxagoras came Herodotus. We may be thankful that 
among the Greeks who visited Egypt, there was one whose taste was 
more for matter-of-fact, than for those high abstract inquiries which are 
not popularly included under that name : for the scientific and philoso- 
phical writings of his countrymen are, for the most part, lost, while the 
travels of Herodotus remain, as lively and fresh in their interest as ever. 
We may mourn that the others are gone ; but we must rejoice that 
these are preserved. Here, at least, we obtain what we have longed 
for in the whole course of our study of the early Egyptian periods ; 
records of the sayings and doings of the priests, and of the destinies of 
the people ; pictures of the appearance of the great Valley and of its 
inhabitants ; and details of their lives, customs, manners, history and 
opinions. The temptation is strong to present again here, to fill up 
and illuminate this sketch of the history of old Egypt, some of the 
material of Herodotus : but his books lie within reach of every hand: 
and I will use them no further than is necessary to the illustration of 
what I myself observed in my study of the Monuments. 

Within a hundred years of Herodotus, came Plato. It may be ques- 
tioned whether this visit of Plato to Egypt be not one of the most 
important events which have occurred in the history of the human mind. 
The first thing that strikes us, is how much there must have been to 
be learned in Egypt at this time, since Plato, his friend Eudoxus the 
astronomer, and Chrysippus the physician, all came — (such men, and 
from such a distance !) to study in the schools of Heliopolis. It is re- 
lated, and was believed in his own age, that Plato lived thirteen years 
at Heliopolis : and when Strabo was there, 350 years afterwards, he 
was shown the house where Plato and Eudoxus lived and studied. — 
Plato had met Socrates, it is believed, at the age of nineteen. After 
having learned what he could of him, and sustained his death, and been 
compelled for political reasons to leave Athens, he had gone to Megara, 
and joined the school of Euclid,t — also a pupil of Socrates, and one 
well qualified to cherish what Socrates had sown in the mind of Plato. 
Though this school w'as considered one of doubt and denial, its ulti- 
mate doctrine was, that the Supreme Good is always the same, and 
unchangeable. Thus trained and set thinking, Plato came to Egypt, 
and sat where Moses had sat, at the feet of the priests, gaining, as 

* Proclus says that Socrates, as well as Plato, learned the doctrine of the Irarnortahty 
of the Soul from the Egyptians. If so, his great master, Anaxagoras, was probably, — 
ahiiost certainly. — the channel through which he received it. 
■f Not the geometrician. 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Moses had gained, an immortal wisdom from their lips. The methods 
of learning of these two men, and their acquisitions, differed according 
to the differing characteristics of their minds. Each took from his 
teachers what he could best appropriate. Moses was spiritualized to 
a wonderful degree, considering his posidon and race; but his surpass- 
ing eminence was as a redeeming legislator. Plato had deeply-con- 
sidered views on political matters ; but his surpassing eminence was as 
a spiritual philosopher. Moses redeemed a race of slaves, made men 
of them, organized them into a society, and constituted them a nation ; 
while Plato did only theoretical work of that kind, — enough to testify 
to the political philosophy of Egypt, but not to affect the condition of 
Greece. But Plato taught the Egyptian doctrine (illustrated on the 
tombs ages before, and, as Proclus declares, derived by Plato from 
Egypt) of the Immortality of the Soul, and rewards and punishments 
in an after-life. This was what Plato taught that Moses did not. The 
great old Egyptian doctrine, extending back, as the Book of Genesis 
shows us, as far as the Egyptian traditions reached — the great doctrine 
of a Divine Moral Government, was the soul alike of the practical legis- 
lation of Moses and the speculative philosophy of Plato ; and this is, as 
it seems to us now, their great common qualification for bearing such 
a part as each does in the constitution of the prevalent Christianity. — 
We shall have to return to this hereafter, when we have seen more of 
the Egyptian priesthood. Meantime, I may observe, that unless there 
is other evidence that Plato visited the Jews than the amount of Juda- 
ism in his writings, it does not seem necessary to suppose such a visit. 
If he passed thirteen years beside that fountain of wisdom where Moses 
dwelt till his manhood, it is not extraordinary that they should have 
great Ideas in common. The wonder would be if they had not. The 
intellectual might of Moses seems to show that the lapse of intervening 
ages had not much changed the character of the schools: and the result 
on the respective minds of the two students may have been much the 
same as if they had sat side by side in bodily presence, as they ever 
w^ill do in the reason of all who faithfully contemplate the operation of 
the Christian religion on the minds of men, from the beginning till 
now. — That Plato derived and adopted much from his predecessors 
among Greek philosophers, is very evident: and from Pythagoras above 
all. But many of these Greek philosophers had been trained in Egypt; 
and especially, as we have seen, Pythagoras, whose abstract ideas 
would appear to be displayed in a course of illustration on the walls 
of the Theban tombs, if we did not know that these tombs, with all 
their pictured mysteries, had been closed many centuries before the 
philosopher was born. 

During all our review of the old Egyptians, we have not yet con- 
sidered who they were. Of this there is little to say. It is useless to 
call them Copts; because all we can say of the Copts is that we must 
suppose them to be of the same race originally as the old Egyptians ; 
and this throws no light on the derivation of either. Speaking of the 
origin of the Colchians, Herodotus says, that the Egyptians believed 
them to be descended from followers of Sesostris ; and that he thought 



HISTORY OF HERODOTUS. 



103 



this probable from (among other reasons) their being black, and having 
curly hair.* This blackness was probably only a relative term ; 
for not only do we find the Nubians at this day, with their strong 
resemblance to the portraits in the tombs, of a dark bronze, but in the 
tombs there is a clear distinction between the absolute black of negro 
captives and other dark complexions. On these walls, the color given 
to figures generally is a dark red. Where there is a bluish black, or 
neutral tint on the faces, it is distinctive merely of the priestly caste. 
The women are sometimes painted yellow; and so are certain 
strangers, supposed to be Asiatic or European. It is a curious circum- 
stance, related by Sir W. Gell, that in the Tarquinian tombs in Etru- 
ria, all the men have the dark red complexion found in the Egyptian 
tombs. This rather tends to confirm the impression that the red color 
may be symbolical, like the blue for the priests, and the yellow for the 
women. On the whole, it is thought probable that the old Egyptian 
complexion was of the dark bronze of the Nubians of the present day. 
Herodotus says that, except the Lybians, no people were so blessed in 
point of health and temperament :t and he repeatedly records traits of 
their cleanliness, and nicety with regard to food and habits. It does 
not appear that they were insensible or reconciled to the plague of in- 
digenous insects, as natives usually are, — and especially Africans; for 
he tells us of their sleeping under nets to avoid the mosquitoes.;}: Their 
dress was of linen, with fringes round the legs,§ — and over this they 
wore a cloak of white wool, which must be laid aside before they en- 
tered the temples; — or the tomb ; for it was not permitted to bury in 
woolen garments. Everyman had but one wife;|| and the women 
were clearly in that state of freedom which must be supposed to exist 
where female sovereignty was a matter of course in its turn. Herodo- 
tus tells that the women went into the market, and conducted com- 
merce while the men stayed at home to weave cloth. ^ He speaks of 
them as a serious-minded and most religious people. " They are very 
religious," he says, "and surpass all men in the worship they render 
to the gods."'** He tells of their great repugnance to the customs of 
the Greeks and of all other men ;tt and everywhere attests the original- 
ity of the Egyptians, and their having given truth, knowledge and cus- 
toms to others, without having themselves derived from any. 

One of the most interesting inquiries to us is about the language of 
these people. To form any idea of the labors of modern interpreters 
of the monuments, we must remember that they have not only to read 
the perfectly singular cipher of these writers on stone, but to find their 
very language. Of course, the only hope is in the study of the Coptic ; 
and the Coptic became almost a dead language in the twelfth century 
of our era, and entirely so in the seventeenth, after having been for ages 
corrupted by the admixture of foreign terms, going on at the same time 
with the loss of old native ones. Egypt never had any permanent 
colonies in which her language might be preserved during the ages 

* Herod. II. 104. f Ibid. 77. J Ibid. 95. 

§ Ibid. 81. II Ibid. 92. IT Ilnd. 35. 

** Ibid. 37. tt Ibid. 91. 



104 



EASTERN LIFE. 



when one foreign power after another took possession of her valley, 
and rendered the language of her people compound and corrupt. 
Without repeating here the long and well-known story of the progress 
of discovery of the ancient language, it is enough to give the results 
thus far attained. 

The key not only to the cipher but to the language, was afforded by 
the discovery of the same inscription written, as the inscription itself 
declared, in three languages, — the Greek, the Enchorial or ordinary 
Egyptian writing, and the old sacred character. The most ancient 
was found to bear a close relation to the Coptic, as then known : a 
relation probably, as has been observed by a recent writer,* " similar 
to that which the Latin does to the Italian, the Zend to the modern 
Persian, or the Sanscrit to many of the vernacular dialects now spoken 
in India." This key was applied with wonderful sagacity and inge- 
nuity by Champollion the younger, who proceeded a good deal further 
than reading the names and titles of the kings and their officers. He 
ventured upon introducing or deciphering (whichever it may be called) 
many words not to be found in the later Coptic, except in their sup- 
posed roots, nor, of course, anywhere else. The great difficulty is 
that, the language having, by lapse of ages, lost its original pov/er of 
grammatical inflexion, a quality which it seems scarcely possible to 
restore, the relations of ideas in a sentence, which in the more modern 
Coptic are expressed by auxiliary terms, must be disposed by conjec- 
ture, or by doubtful internal comparison and analogy. It is easy to 
see how thus, while names and titles, and all declaratory terms may 
be read, when once the alphabet is secured, all beyond must be in a 
high degree conjectural, at least till the stock of terms is largely in- 
creased. The stock is on the increase, however. Champollion made 
a noble beginning : Dr. Lepsius has corrected him in some important 
instances ; and the Chevalier Bunsen has offered a Lexicon of the old 
Egyptian language, placing above four hundred words in comparison 
with the known Coptic. This is a supply which will go a good way 
in reading the legends on the monuments; by which process, again, 
we may be helped to more. The very singular nature of the alphabet 
being once understood, and the beginning of a Lexicon being supplied, 
there seems reason to hope that the process of discovery may be car- 
ried on by the application of one fresh mind after another to the task 
which all must see to be as important as any which can occupy the 
human faculties. Or, if all do not see this, it must be from insufficient 
knowledge of the facts: — insufficient knowledge of the amount of the 
records, of their antiquity, and of their general nature. When the 
traveler gazes at vast buildings covered over in every part \y\ih writing; 
every architrave, every abacus, every recess and every projection, all 
the lines of the cornice, and all the intervals of the sculptures, he is 
overwhelmed with the sense of the immensity of knowledge locked up 
from him before his eyes. Let those at home imagine the ecclesiasti- 
cal history of Christendom written up thus on every inch of the sur- 

* Penny Cyclopaedia; Article, Coptic Language. 



WRITTEN DOCUMENTS OF THE EGYPTIANS. 



105 



face of its cathedrals, and the civil history of any country, from its 
earliest times, thus engraved on all its public buildings and palaces, 
and he may form some conception of what it would be, in regard to 
mere amount, to be able to read the inscriptions in Egypt. If he is 
also aware that the religion, philosophy and science of the world for 
many thousand years, a religion, philosophy, and science which reveal 
a greater nobleness, depth, and extent, the more they are explored, are 
recorded there, under our very eyes and hands, he will see that no 
nobler task awaits any lover of truth and of his race, than that of ena- 
bling mankind to read these earliest volumes of its own history. 

And the world has no other resource in regard to this object. There 
is no doubt about the ancient Egyptians having had an extensive written 
literature : but it is lost. It was shelved when the Greek language and 
literature became the fashion in Egypt: and previous circumstances 
had been unfavorable to the preservation of the rolls of goat and sheep 
skins, and the subsequent papyri, which contained the best thoughts of 
the best men of five or six thousand years ago. We may mourn over 
this ; — we must mourn, for it is certain that they knew things that we 
are yet ignorant of, and that they could do things which we can only 
wonder at: — but the records are lost, and no man can help it now. 
There has been later damage too, clearly traceable. We all know how 
early Christianity was introduced into Egypt : and all who have been 
there have seen how indefatigable the early Christians were in destroying 
everything relating to the ancient people and their faith that they could 
lay their hands on. Again, the Emperor Severus carefully collected the 
writings which related to the mysteries of the priests, and buried them 
in the tomb of Alexander. And again, Diocletian ordered all the 
Egyptian books on alchemy to be destroyed, lest these makers of gold 
should become too rich to remain dependent on Rome. Thus scarcely 
a vestige of the ancient writing on destructible substances remains, and 
the monumental records are our only resource. While we take to heart 
the terrible loss, let us take to heart also the value of the resource, and 
search for the charm which may remove the spell of dumbness from 
these eloquent old teachers. Perhaps the solemn Memnon may yet 
respond if touched by the warm bright rays of zeal and intelligence ; 
and the great Valley may take up the echoes from end to end. And 
this is a case where he who gives his labor quickly gives twice. Time 
is a more efficient defacer than even the Coptic Christians : and the 
indefatigable enemy, the Desert, can bury old records on a vaster scale 
than any Severus. There are rulers bearing sway, too, who are not 
more enligfitened than the mischievous Diocletian. 

As for the Egyptian method of recording the language, there were 
three kinds of writing: the Hieroglyphic, or picture writing; the Hie- 
ratic, — an abridged form of the hieroglyphic, used by the priests for 
their records ; and the Enchorial, in popular use, which appears to be 
a still further abridgment of the hieratic, whose signs have flowed into 
a running hand. Written language is found among the very earliest 
memorials of this most ancient people. 

As for their social organization, we know more of it than of most 



106 



EASTERN LIFE. 



particulars concerning them. The most important, however, in the 
state appears to have been that of the caste of Priests. The monarch 
must be of that class. If a member of the next (the military) caste was 
made king, he must first become a priest.* — Herodotus says that 
Egyptian society was composed of seven castes ; Plato says six :t 
Diodorus Siculus says five. J The classification of Herodotus is so 
strange that it is clear that he included under his titles some division of 
employments which we do not understand. He declares§ the seven 
classes to be the Priests, the Military, the Herdsmen, the Swineherds, 
the Tradesmen, the Interpreters, and the Pilots and Seamen. The 
classification of Diodorus will help us better. He gives us the Priests, 
the Military, the Husbandmen, the Tradesmen and Artificers, and, low- 
est of all, the Shepherds; and with them the Poulterers, Fishermen 
and Servants. The division indicates much of the national mind, as I 
need not point out. We must remember, throughout our study of the 
monuments, that the priests were not occupied with religion alone. 
They had possession besides of the departments of politics, law, medi- 
cine, science and philosophy. It is curious to speculate on what must 
have been the division of employments among them, when we read in 
Herodotus how they partitioned out their art of medicine, — there being 
among them no general practitioners, as we should say, but physicians 
of the heart, the lungs, the abdomen; and oculists, dentists, &c.|| If 
such a subdivision was followed out through the whole range of study 
and practice in all professions, the priestly caste must contain within 
itself a sufficient diversity to preserve its enlightenment and magna- 
nimity better than we, with our modern view of the tendencies of a 
system of castes, might suppose. 

I have perhaps said enough of this ancient peop^le to prepare for an 
entrance upon the study of their monuments. The other castes, and 
a multitude of details of personal and social condition and usage, will 
come before us when we turn to the sculptures and pictures. Before 
going on to their successors, we may call to mind the grounds which 
Herodotus assigns for his fullness of detail about the Pharaohs and 
their people. He says, " I shall enlarge further on what concerns 
Egypt, because it contains more wonders than any other country ; and 
because there is no region besides where one sees so many works 
which are admirable and beyond expression. "If 

Beyond expression, indeed, are those great works. And do we not 
know that wherever men's works have a grandeur or beauty beyond 
expression, the feeling which suggested and inspired them is yet more 
beyond expression still. O ! how happy should I be if I could arouse 
in others by this book, as I experienced it myself from the monuments, 
any sense of the depth and solemnity of the Ideas which were the 
foundation of the old Egyptian faith ! I did not wait till I went to 
Egypt to remember that the faculty of Reverence is inherent in all 
men, and that its natural exercise is always to be sympathized with, 



* Plutarch, de Is. IX. t In Timcro. J Diod. 1. 74. § Herod. II. 1G4. 
II Ibid. 84. IT Ibid. 35. 



ILLIBERAL CONCEPTIONS. 



107 



irrespective of its objects. I did not wait till I went to Egypt to be- 
come aware that every permanent reverential observance has some 
great Idea at the bottom of it, and that it is our business not to deride 
or be shocked at the method of manifestation, but to endeavor to ap- 
prehend the Idea concerned. I vividly remember the satisfaction of 
ascertaining the ideas that lay at the bottom of those most barbarous 
South Sea island practices of Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism. If 
some sympathy in conception and feeling is possible in even this lowest 
case, how far should we be from contempt or levity in studying the 
illustrations of Egyptian faith and hope which we find blazoned on 
works "admirable and beyond expression!" With all Men's tend- 
ency to praise the olden time — to say that the former times are better 
than these — we find that it is usually only the wisdom of their own 
forefathers that they extol — merely a former mode of holding and act- 
ing upon their own existing ideas. They have no such praise for the 
forefathers of another race, who had other ideas, and acted them out 
differently. Instead of endeavoring to ascertain the ideas, they revile 
or ridicule the manifestation, which was never meant to meet their con- 
ceptions, and can never be interpreted by them. Thus we, as a socie- 
ty, take upon ourselves to abhor and utterly despise the "Idolatry" of 
the Egyptians, without asking ourselves whether we comprehend any- 
thing of the principles of Egyptian theology. The children, on their 
stools by our firesides, wonder eternally how people so clever could be 
so silly as to pay homage to crocodiles and cats ; and their parents too 
often agree with them, instead of pointing out that there might be, and 
certainly were, reasons in the minds of Egyptians which made it a 
very diff'erent thing in them to cherish sacred animals from what it 
would be in us. Everybody at home talks of the ugly and grotesque 
character of the Egyptian works of art; and no wonder, if they judge 
wnth English mind and English eyes, from broken specimens in the 
British Museum. One can only ask them to trust something to the 
word of travelers who have seen such works in their plenitude, in 
their own locality and proper connection. Probably some people in 
Greece were talking of the ugly and grotesque character of such 
Egyptian decorations as they might have heard of, while Herodo- 
tus was gazing on them on their native soil, and declaring in his own 
mind, as he afterwards did to the whole world and to all time, that 
they were "admirable and beyond expression." I would ask for these 
considerations to be borne in mind, not only for the sake of justice to 
the earliest philosophers of the human race (as far as we know), but 
because it is impossible to appreciate the monuments — I may say im- 
possible to see them — through any other medium than that of a teacha- 
ble mind, working with a sympathizing heart. If any one hesitates to 
grant me this much, let me ask him whether he would be willing to 
have the Christian religion judged of, five thousand years hence, by 
such an one as himself, when its existing forms shall have been long 
forgotten, and its eternal principles shall be expanded in some yet un- 
known mode of manifestation? Supposing oblivion to have been by 
that time as completely wrapped round Catholic and Protestant ritual 



108 



EASTERN LIFE. 



as round the ceremonial of Egyptian worship, would a Christian be 
content to have his faith judged of by a careless traveler of another 
race, who should thrust a way among the buried pillars of our cathe- 
dral aisles, and look for superstition in every recess, and idolatry in 
every chapel; and who, lighting upon some carved fox and goose or 
grinning mask, should go home and declare that Christianity was made 
up of what was idolatrous, unideal and grotesque? If he is aware 
that in our Christianity there is much that will not appear on our ca- 
thedrals five thousand years hence, let him only remember that there 
may be much that is ideal and holy in other faiths which we have not 
had the opportunity of appreciating. I believe this to be the case with 
every faith which, from the first appearance of the human race upon 
our globe, has met and gratified the faculty of reverence in any con- 
siderable number of men. If I did not believe this with regard to the 
religion and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, I must have looked 
at them merely as a wonderful show, and should certainly have visited 
them in vain. 

Here, then, we take leave of the Pharaohs and their times; and, we 
may say, of their people; for the spirit of the old Egyptians was gone, 
and only a lifeless body was left, to be used as it pleased their con- 
querors. We hear of the brilliant reigns of the Ptolemies, who now 
succeeded to the Egyptian throne; but theirs was a Greek civilization, 
which, though unquestionably derived from Egypt, many centuries 
before, was now as essentially different from that of the old Egyptians 
as were the characteristics of the two nations. 

We must ever observe that there was no true fusion of the minds of 
the two races. The Greeks learned and adopted much from the 
Egyptians; but the Egyptians, instead of adopting from the Greeks, 
died out. No new god was ever introduced into Egypt; while the 
Greeks, after having long before derived many of their gods from 
Egypt, now accommodated their deities to those of the Egyptians, and 
in an arbitrary and superficial way, adopted the old symbols. There 
is every reason to believe that the priests, when employed by the Ptole- 
mies to interpret the monuments, fitted their new and compounded 
ideas to the old symbols, and thus produced a theology and philosophy 
which any resuscitated Pharaoh would have disavowed. The Greeks 
took no pains to learn the Egyptian language, or to enter into the old 
Egyptian mind ; and there is therefore endless confusion in the accounts 
they have given to the world of the old gods and the old monarchs of 
the Nile valley. To understand anything of the monuments of the 
times we are now entering upon, it will be necessary to bear in mind 
that the Ptolemies and Caesars built upon Pharaonic foundations, and 
in imitation of Pharaonic edifices; but necessarily with such an ad- 
mixture of Greek and Roman ideas with their Egyptian conceptions as 
to cause a complete corruption of ancient art. It is necessary never to 
forget this, or we shall be perpetually misled. We may admire the 
temples of the Ptolemies and Caiisars as much or as litUe as we please; 
but we must remember that they are not Egyptian. 

Every country weak enough to need the aid of Greek mercenaries 



AGE OF THE PTOLEMIES. 



109 



was sure to become, ere long, Greek property. It was so with Persia, 
and with its province, Egypt. The event was hastened by the desire 
of the Egyptians to be quit of their Persian masters. Alexander the 
Great was the conqueror, as everybody knows. He chose his time 
when the chief part of the Persian forces of Egypt was absent — sent 
to fight the Greeks in Asia Minor. When once Alexander had set 
foot in Pelusium, the rest was easy; for the towns opened their gates 
to him with joy; and he had only to march to Heliopolis and then to 
Memphis. He gave his countenance as well as he knew how to the 
old worship, restoring the temples and honoring the symbols of the 
gods at Memphis, and marching to the Oasis of Amun, to present gifts 
to the chief deity of the Egyptians, and to claim to be his son. It was 
on his way there, by the coast, that he saw in passing the harbor where 
Alexandria now stands, and perceived its capabilities. He ordered the 
improvement of the harbor, and the building of the city which would 
have immortalized his name, if he had done nothing else. This visit 
of Alexander the Great to Egypt took place 332 b. c. He left orders 
that the country should be governed by its own laws, and that its re- 
ligion should be absolutely respected. This was wise and humane, 
and no doubt we owe some of our knowledge of more ancient times to 
this conservative principle of Alexander's government. But he was not 
practically sustained by his deputies ; and he died eight years after 
his visit to Egypt. His successor gave the government of Egypt into 
the hands of Ptolemy, who called himself the son of Lagus, but was 
commonly believed to be an illegitimate son of Philip of Macedon. 
In seventeen years he became king; and with him begins the great 
line of the Ptolemies, of whom sixteen reigned in succession for 275 
years, till the witch Cleopatra let the country go into the hands of the 
Romans, to become a Roman province, in 30 b. c. 

It was under the government of the first Ptolemy that Greek visitors 
again explored the Nile valley as high as Thebes, and higher. Heca- 
taeus of Abdera was one of these travelers, and a great traveler he was ; 
for, if Diodorus Siculus tells us truly, he once stood on Salisbury 
Plain, and saw there the great temple of the Sun which we call 
Stonehenge ;* and he certainly stood on the plain of Thebes, and saw 
the great temple of the Sun there. The priests had recovered their 
courage, under the just rule of the Greeks, and had brought out the 
gold and silver and other treasures of the temples which had been care- 
fully hidden from the Persians. Thebes, however, was almost dead by 
this time; and its monuments were nearly all which a stranger had to 
see. We are glad to know that the records of the priests told of forty- 
seven tombs existing in the valley of Kings' Sepulchres, of which 
seventeen had at that time been discovered under their concealment of 
earth, and laid open. Some of these, and some fresh ones, have been 
explored in our own days; but it is an animating thing to believe that 
there were at least forty-seven originally, and that many yet remain 
yntouched since they were closed on the demise of the Pharaohs. 



Sharpe's History of Egypt, p. 146. 



110 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Whose will be the honor of laying them open? — not in the Cambyses 
spirit of rapine, but in all honor and reverence, in search of treasures 
which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves carry away — a 
treasure of light out of the darkened place, and of knowledge out of 
that place where usually no device or knowledge is found ! 

We are grieved now to lose the old Egyptian names, but at this 
time they naturally become exchanged for Greek. On becomes Helio- 
polis. *This becomes Abydos. Thebes (called in the Bible No Am- 
men), becomes Diospolis Magna. Pilak becomes Philce. Petpieh is 
Aphroditopolis (the city of Athor). Even the country itself, from 
being called Khem (answering to Ham in the Bible), is henceforth 
known as iEgyptus. 

In the reign of the second Ptolemy lived a writer of uncommon in- 
terest and importance to us now — Manetho, the Egyptian priest. We 
have only fragments of the writings of Manetho, but they are of great 
and immediate value to us; fragments of the history of Egypt, which 
he wrote at the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus. He wrote in 
Greek, of course, deriving his information from the inscriptions in the 
temples. What would not we give now for his knowledge of the 
Egyptian language! and what would we not give to have his works 
complete! His abode was at that great seat of learning where Moses 
got his lore — Heliopolis. He is the very man we want — to stand on 
the ridge of time, and tell us who are below, what was doing in the 
depths of the old ages. He did so stand, and he did fully tell what he 
saw; but his words are gone to the four winds, and but a few uncon- 
nected declarations have reached us. We have a list of old kings from 
him, and Josephus has, by extracting, preserved some passages of his 
account of the Hebrews when in Egypt; but Josephus, in his unscru- 
pulous vanity, wishing to make out that his nation were descended 
from the Shepherd Kings, puts certain words of his own into Manetho's 
mouth, thus impairing our trust in the poor extracts we have. It ap- 
pears, and should be remembered, that the Egyptian records make no 
mention of the Hebrews, and that what Manetho told of them must 
therefore be derived from other and probably inferior sources. His 
list of kings is preserved in some early Christian writers; but the diffi- 
culty has been how to use it, and how far to trust it. I must not enter 
here upon the story, however interesting, of the fluctuations of the 
credit of Manetho. Suffice it that all recent discoveries have directly 
tended to establish his character as an able and conscientious historian. 
The names he gives have been found inscribed in temples and tombs, 
and even, latterly, in the Pyramids; and the numerous and nameless 
incidental notices which occur in the study of ancient monuments have, 
in this instance, gone to corroborate the statements of Manetho. As 
the monuments are a confirmation of his statements, so are his state- 
ments a key to the monuments; and with this intimation of unbounded 
obligations to Manetho, we must leave him. 

One event which happened in the reign of the second Ptolemy we 
must just refer to, as it is connected with the chronological questions 
which make up so much of the interest of the history of Egypt. The 



DECLINE OF THE PTOLEMIES. 



Ill 



Jews then in Egypt were emancipated by this Ptolemy; and they em- 
ployed their influence with him in obtaining, by his countenance, a 
good Greek translation of their Scriptures. By communication with 
the High Priest at Jerusalem, there came about an appointment of 
seventy qualified men who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into 
Greek, and presented the world with the version called the Septuagint. 
The chronology of this work differs widely from that given by the 
Samaritan and Hebrew versions ; the Septuagint assigning between 
Adam and Abraham, nearly 1400 years more than the Hebrew ; and 
so on. For a long course of time, the learned and religious world 
believed that the discrepancy between the Septuagint and (so-called) 
Mosaic histories was ascribable to forgery on the part of the Alex- 
andrian Jews. But now that chronological evidence is flowing in from 
other sources, the judgment of biblical scholars is becoming favorable 
to the Septuagint computation. Of course, it becomes at the same time 
more accordant with the recorded history of Egypt. 

In the reign of the third Ptolemy lived Eratosthenes, — a truly great 
scholar and wise man, — called the second Plato, and also the second 
of the first man in every science. He was a Greek, understanding 
Egyptian : and he wrote a history of Egypt in correction of that of 
Manetho. Their statements, their lists of kings, appear at first sight 
irreconcilable. This is not the place in which to give an account of 
the difficulty. It is enough to say that the attention of scholars has 
been employed upon it to good purpose ; and that it may be hoped that 
two men, reasonably believed so trustworthy, will be found, when we 
can understand them, to have told the same story, and to have sup- 
plied us with new knowledge by the very difference in their way of tell- 
ing it. 

One great event must be noticed before we go on from the dominion 
of the Ptolemies to that of Rome. The Ptolemies degenerated, as 
royal races are apt to do ; and after a few of their reigns, the Egyptians 
became as heartily tired of their Greek rulers as they had been of the 
Persian. In the time of the eighth and ninth sovereigns of this line, 
Thebes rebelled, and maintained along resistance against the authority 
and forces of Ptolemy Lathyrus. The temples were stout citadels, in 
which the besieged could seclude themselves: and they held them long. 
When Ptolemy Lathyrus prevailed at last, he made dreadful havoc at 
Thebes. Cambyses had done wonders in the way of destruction : but 
Lathyrus far exceeded him. As one walks over the plain of Thebes, 
whose final overthrow dates from this conflict, one's heart sickens 
among the ruins made by the Persian, the Greek and the Earthquake. 
To the last of these, one submits quietly, though mournfully, as to a 
Fate : but those who do not regard men as necessary agents, — agents 
of an exact necessity in human history, — may find their spirits rising 
in resentment against the long-buried invaders, as the spirits of the 
Thebans rose in resentment while they looked out upon their besiegers 
from the loopholes of their lofty propyla. This greatest and last act 
of devastation took place 88 b. c. ; fifty-eight years before Egypt became 
a Roman province. 



112 



EASTERN LIFE. 



About thirty years before this annexation, Diodorus Siculus was in 
Egypt. He probably witnessed the beginning of the building of the 
temple of Dendera. He saw much religious ceremonial, which it is 
curious to read of, though there is no saying how far it remained true 
to the old ideas in which it originated. The testimony of Diodorus as 
to what happened in his own time is of course more valuable than his 
essays in the ancient history : but the latter are interesting in their 
way, as showing what were the priestly traditions current in the last 
days of the Ptolemies. 

As our object in this rapid view of Egyptian history is to obtain 
some clearness of ideas in preparation for looking at the monuments, 
"we need not go into any detail of the times subsequent to tbe building 
of Egyptian monuments or of the times of those Romans who erected 
some temples, but whose history is familiar to everybody. I need only 
say that, after the death of the last Cleopatra and her son Csesarion, in 
30 B.C., Egypt was annexed to the Roman dominions for seven hun- 
dred years. At the end of that period, the ruler of Egypt had enough 
to do to keep off Persian aggression. He bought off the Arabs, — a 
stronger enemy, — for a time ; but the great conqueror Amrou marched 
in triumph from his capture of Damascus and Jerusalem, and, after 
some struggle and mischance, took the great cities of Egypt, and sent 
the libraries of Alexander to heat the baths of that city ; for which 
purpose, it is said that they lasted six months. 

One of the first visitors to Egypt after its annexation to Rome was 
Strabo, who went up the banks of the Nile with the Prefect, as far as 
Aswan, and has left a full and careful account of what he saw. He 
enlarges on Alexandria, at that time a most magnificent city, while 
Thebes was a village, interspersed with colossal ruins. Memphis was 
still great, ranking next to Alexandria: but Heliopolis was sunk, and 
almost gone. Its schools were closed; but the memory of them re- 
mained, on the spot, as well as afar: for the house was shown where 
Plato and Eudoxus lived and studied. Would it were there still! At 
present, there is nothing left visible of Heliopolis but its obelisk, and a 
circuit of mounds. Strabo thought the place almost deserted in his 
time: but what a boon it would be to us to see what was before his 
eyes, within a few years of the Christian era! 

Here, then, we stop; at a period which we have been M^ont to con- 
sider ancient, but which, in regard to our object, is so modern as to 
have no further interest or purpose which need detain us. 

We now proceed to the monuments. 



ABOO-SIMBIL. 



113 



CHAPTER X. 

ABOO-SIMBIL.— EGYPTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF THE GODS. 

The temples of Aboo-Simbil are both of the time of Ramases II.; — 
in the earlier part of the great Third Period. Nothing more interesting 
than these temples is to be found beyond the limits of Thebes. 

I went up to the smaller temple early in the morning. Of the six 
statues of the facade, the two in the centre represent Athor, whose calm 
and gentle face is surmounted by the usual crown, — the moon contained 
within the cow's horns. On entering the portal in the rock, I found 
myself in a hall where there was plenty to look at, though the fires 
lightened by the Arabs have blackened the walls in some places, and 
the whole is, as I need not say, very old, — nearly 1400 b.c. This en- 
trance hall is supported by six square pillars, all of which bear the head 
of Athor on the front face of their capitals, the other three faces being 
occupied with sculptures, once gayly painted, and still showing blue, 
red and yellow colors. On the walls here were the men of the old 
military caste, in their defensive armor; — a sort of cuirass of chain 
armor, — red links on a yellow ground: and their brethren the civilians, 
in red frocks : and the women in tight yellow garments, with red sashes 
tied in front. Most of the figures are represented in the act of bringing 
off'erings to the gods : but on either side the door, the hero Ramases is 
holding by the hair a captive who is on one knee, and looks up, — in 
the one instance with a complete negro face ; in the other, with a face 
certainly neither Egyptian nor negro, and whose chin ends in a peaked 
beard. Here we have the conquests of the hero in upper Africa, and 
probably in Asia. He holds up his falchion, as if about to strike; 
but the goddess behind him lifts her hand, as if in intercession, while 
Osiris, in front, holds forth the great knife, as if to command the slaugh- 
ter. When Osiris carries, as here, the emblems of the crozier and the 
flagellum or whip, he is present in his function of Judge : and here, ac- 
cordingly, we see him deciding the fate of the nations conquered by 
Ramases. 

Within this outer hall is a transverse corridor, ending in two rude 
chambers, where I found nothing but bats. But beyond the corridor 
lies the sacred chamber, the shrine of the deity. There she is, in the 
form of the crowned head of a cow, — her emblematic disk being be- 
tween the horns. In another part, she stands, as a cow, in a boat sur- 
rounded by water plants, — the king and queen bringing offerings to this 
"Lady of Aboshek, the foreign land." We shall meet with Athor fre- 
quently as " Lady of the West; " and therefore as the morning star ; as 
the welcomer of the Sun at the end of his course ; and as the mild and 
transient Night, which is quite a difi'erent personage from the stern and 
fixed Night of Chaos. As possessor or guardian of the West, Athor 
8 



114 



EASTERN LIFE. 



was patroness of the western part of Thebes, — " the Lybian suburb," 
as it was called of old."^ Plutarch says that the death of Osiris was be- 
lieved to have happened in her month ; — the third Egyptian month : that 
her shrines were in that month carried about in procession ; at the time 
when the Pleiades appear and the husbandmen began to sow their corn. 
The countenance of this goddess was everywhere in the temples so 
mild and tranquil as to accord well with the imagery of the Summer 
Night, the Morning Star, and the Seed-time, which are associated, in 
the Egyptian worship, with her name. I found the figure in the ady- 
tum (Holiest Place) much mutilated: but the head and ears were still 
distinctly visible. Hieroglyphic legends on each side declare her name 
and titles. This temple extends, from the portal, about ninety feet into 
the rock. Little as I had yet learned how to look at temples, I found 
this full of interest. In the course of the morning, we detected some of 
our own crew making a fire against the sculptures in the hall. Of 
course, we interfered, with grave faces : but there is no hope that 
Arabs will not make their fires in such convenient places, whenever 
they can. A cave at the top of the bank is irresistible to them, whether 
it be sculptured or not. 

I was impatient to get to the Colossi of the large temple, which 
looked magnificent from our deck. So, after breakfast, I set forth alone, 
to see what height I could attain, in the examination of the statues. 

The southernmost is the only complete one. The next to it is terri- 
bly shattered : and the other two have lost the top of the helmet. They 
are much sanded up, though, thanks to Mr. Hay, much less than they 
were. The sand slopes up from the half cleared entrance to the chin 
of the northernmost colossus : and this slope of sand it was my purpose 
to climb. It was so steep, loose, and hot to the feet, that it was no easy 
matter to make my way up. The beetles, which tread lightly and seem 
to like having warm feet, got on very well ; and they covered the sand 
with a net work of tracks : but heavier climbers, shod in leather, are 
worsted in the race with them. But one cannot reach the chin of a 
colossus every day: and it was worth an effort. And when I had 
reached the chin, I made a little discovery about it which may be worth 
recording, and which surprised me a good deal at the time. I found 
that a part of the lower jaw, reaching half way up the lower lip, was 
composed of the mud and straw of which crude bricks are made. There 
had been evidently a fault in the stone, which was supplied by this 
material. It was most beautifully moulded. The beauty of the curves 
of these great faces is surprising in the stone ; — the fidelity of the round- 
ing of the muscles, and the grace of the flowing lines of the cheek and 
jaw : but it was yet more wonderful in such a material as mud and 
straw. I cannot doubt that this chin and lip were moulded when the 
material was in a soft state: — a ditiicult task in the case of a statue 
seventy feet high, standing up against the face of a rock. I called the 
gentlemen up, to bear witness to the fact: and it set us looking for more 
instances. Mr. E. soon found one. Part of the dress of the Second 



* Wilkinsons Ancient Egyptians, IV. 387. 



TEMPLES OF ABOO-SIMBIL. 



115 



Osiride on the right hand, entering the temple, is composed of this same 
material, as smoothly curved and nicely wrought as the chin overhead. 
On examining closely, we found that this layer of mud and straw 
covered some chiseling within. The artist had been carving the folds 
of the dress, when he came upon a fault in the stone which stopped his 
work till he supplied a surface of material which he could mould. 

The small figures which stand beside the colossi and between their 
ankles, and which look like dolls, are not, as sometimes said, of human 
size. The hat of a man of five feet ten inches does not reach their 
chins by two inches. These small figures are, to my eye, the one 
blemish of this temple. They do not make the great Ramases look 
greater, but only look dollish themselves. 

On the legs of the shattered colossus are the Greek letters, scrawled 
as by a Greek clown, composing the inscription of the soldiers sent by 
Psammitichus in pursuit of the Egyptian deserters whom I mentioned 
as going up the country from Elephantine, when weary of the neglect 
in which they were left there. We are much obliged to " Damear- 
chon, the son of Amaebichus, and Pelephus, the son of Udamus," for 
leaving, in any kind of scrawl, a record of an event so curious. One 
of the strangest sensations to the traveler in Egypt, is finding such 
traces as these of persons who were in their day modern travelers see- 
ing the antiquities of the country, but who take their place now among 
the ancients, and have become subjects of Egyptian history. These 
rude soldiers, carving their names and errand on the legs of an ancient 
statue as they went by, passed the spot a century and a half before 
Cambyses entered the country. One wonders what they thought of 
Thebes, which they had just seen in all its glory. 

As nearly as we could judge by the eye, and by knowing pretty 
well the dimensions of the colossi, the facade from the base of the 
thrones to the top of the row of apes, is nearly or quite one hundred 
feet high. Above rises the untouched rock. 

The faces of Ramases outside (precisely alike) are placid and cheer- 
ful, — full of moral grace : but the eight Osirides within (precisely alike 
too) are more. They are full of soul. It is a mistake to suppose that 
the expression of a face must be injured by its features being colossal. 
In Egypt it may be seen that a mouth three feet wide may be as deli- 
cate, and a nostril which spans a foot as sensitive in expression as anv 
marble bust of our day. It is very wonderful, but quite true. Abdal- j 
latif has left us his testimony as follows, — in speaking of the Sphinx, j 
"A little more than a bow-shot from these Pyramids, we see a colossal 
head and neck appearing above ground. ... Its countenance is 
very charming, and its mouth gives an impression of sweetness and 
beauty. One would say that it smiles benignly^ An able man having 
asked me what t admired most of all that I hacr seen in Egypt, I told 
him that it was the truth of the proportions in the head of the Sphinx. 

. . It is very astonishing that in a countenance so colossal, the 
sculptor should have preserved the precise proportions of all the parts, 
whilst Nature has presented no model of such a colossus, nor of any 



116 



EASTERN LIFE. 



thing which could be compared to it."* I was never tired of gazing 
at the Osirides, everywhere, and trying to imprint ineffaceably on my 
memory the characteristics of the old Egyptian face ; — the handsome 
arched nose, with its delicate nostril : the well-opened, though long 
eye ; the placid, innocent mouth, and the smooth-rounded, amiable 
chin. Innocence is the prevailing expression ; and sternness is absent. 
Thus the stiffest figures, and the most monotonous gesture, convey 
still only an impression of dispassionateness and benevolence. The 
dignity of the gods and goddesses is beyond all description, from this 
union of fixity and benevolence. The ditiiculty to us now is, not to 
account for their having been once worshiped, but to help worship- 
ing them still. I cannot doubt their being the most abstract gods that 
men of old ever adored. Instead of their being engaged in wars or 
mutual rivalries, or favoritisms, or toils, or sufferings, here they sit, 
each complete and undisturbed in his function, — every one supreme, — 
free from all passion, but capable of all mild and serene affections. 
The Greek and Roman gods appear like wayward children beside 
them. Herodotus says that the Greek gods v^ere children to these in 
respect of age :t and truly they appear so in respect of wisdom and 
maturity. Their limitation of powers, and consequent struggles, rival- 
ries and transgressions, their fondness and vindictiveness, their anger, 
fear and hope are all attributes of childhood, contrasting strikingly 
with the majestic passive possession of power, and the dispassionate 
and benignant frame of these ever-young old deities of Egypt. Vigi- 
lant, serene, benign, here they sit, teaching us to inquire reverently into 
the early powers and conditions of that Human Mind which was capa- 
ble of su^ih conceptions of abstract qualities as are represented in their 
forms. f i can imagine no experience more suggestive to the thoughtful 
traveler, anywhere from pole to pole, than that of looking with a clear 
eye and fresh mind on the ecclesiastical sculptures of Egypt, perceiv- 
ing, as such an one must do, how abstract and how lofty were the first 
ideas of Deity known to exist in the world.'j That he should go with 
clear eyes and a fresh mind is needful : for -if he carries a head full of 
notions about idolatry, obscenity, folly and ignorance, he can no more 
judge of what is before his eyes, — he can no more see what is before 
his face, than a proud Mohammedan can apprehend Christianity in a 
Catholic chapel at Venice, or an arrogant Jew can judge of Quakerism or 
Quietism. If the traveler be blessed with the clear eye and fresh mind, 
and be also enriched by comprehensive knowledge of the workings of 
the human intellect in its various circumstances, he cannot but be im- 
pressed and he may be startled, by the evidence before him of the ele- 
vation and beauty of the first conceptions formed by men of the Beings 
of the unseen world. LAnd the more he traces downwards the history 
and philosophy of religious worship, the more astonished he will be to 
find to what an extent this early theology originated later systems of 
belief and adoration, and how long and how far it has transcended 
' some of those which arose out of if.'! New suggestions will thence 



* Relation de TEgypte, 1. I. ch. 4. 



t Herod. II. 4, 50, 58, 146. 



TEMPLES OF ABOO-SIMBIL. 



117 



arise, that where in the midst of what is solemn and beautiful he 
meets with what appears to modern eyes puerile and grotesque, such 
an appearance may deceive, and there may be a meaning contained in 
it which is neither puerile nor grotesque. He will consider that Cam- 
byses might be more foolish in stabbing the bull Apis, to show that it 
could bleed, which nobody denied, than the priests in conserving a 
sacred idea in the form of the bull. He will consider that the Sphinx 
might be to Egyptian eyes, not a hideous compound animal, as it is 
when carved by an English stone mason for a park gate, but a sacred 
symbol of the union of the strongest physical with the highest intel- 
lectual power on earth. 

The seriousness I plead for comes of itself into the mind of any 
thoughtful and feeling traveler, at such a moment as that of entering 
the great temple of Aboo-Simbil. I entered it at an advantageous 
moment, when the morning sunshine was reflected from the sand out- 
side so as to cast a twilight even into the adytum, — two hundred feet 
from the entrance. The four tall statues in the adytum, ranged behind 
the altar, were dimly visible: and I hastened to them, past the eight 
Osirides, through the next pillared hall, and across the corridor. And 
then I looked back, and saw beyond the dark halls and shadowy 
Osirides the golden sand-hill without, a corner of blue sky, and a gay 
group of the crew in the sunshine. It was like looking out upon life 
from the grave. When we left the temple, and the sun had shifted its 
place, we could no longer see the shrine. It is a great advantage to 
enter the temple first when the sun is rather low in the east. 

The eight Osirides are perfectly alike, — all bearing the crosier and 
flagellum, and standing up against huge square pillars, the other sides 
of which are sculptured, as are the walls all round. The aisles behind 
the Osirides are so dark that we could not make out the devices without 
the help of torches ; and the celebrated medallion picture of the siege 
would have been missed by us entirely, if one of the crew had not 
hoisted another on his shoulders, to hold a light above the height of 
their united statures. There we saw the walled town, and the pro- 
ceedings of the besieged and besiegers, as they might have happened 
in the middle ages. The north wall is largely occupied by a tablet, 
bearing the date of the first year of Ramases the Great: and on the 
other side of the temple, between two of the pillars, is another tablet, 
bearing the date of the thirty-fifth year of his reign. The battle scenes 
on the walls are all alive with strong warriors, flying foes, trampled 
victims, and whole companies of chariots. I observed that the chariot 
wheels were not mere, disks, as we should have expected in so early 
an age, but had all six spokes. Every chariot wheel I saw in the 
country had six spokes, however early the date of the sculpture or 
painting. One figure on the south wall is admirable, — a warrior in red, 
who is spearing one foe, while he has his foot on the head of another. 

There are two groups of chambers, of three each, opening out of 
this large hall : and two more separate side chambers. The six in- 
cluded in the two groups are very nearly (but not quite) covered with 
representations of offerings to the gods : very pretty, but with litde 



118 



EASTERN LIFE. 



variety. The offerings are of piles of cakes and fruit, lamps, vases of 
various and graceful sliapes, and flasks. The lotus, in every stage of 
growth, is frequent. Sometimes it is painted yellow, veined with red. 

The boat, that wonderful and favorite symbol which we meet every- 
where, is incessantly repeated here, — the seated figure in the convolu- 
tion at bow and stern, the pavilion in the middle, and the paddle hanging 
over the side. One of these boats is carried by an admirable procession 
of priests, as a shrine, which is borne on poles of palm-trunks lashed 
together. Stone deewans run round the walls of most of these little 
chambers. We could find no evidence of there being any means of 
ventilating these side-rooms ; and how they could be used without, we 
cannot conceive, — enclosed as they are in the solid rock. 

The second and smaller hall has four square pillars, sculptured, of 
course. Next comes the corridor, which has a bare unfinished little 
chamber at each end, now possessed by bats. The altar in the adytum 
is broken ; and some barbarous wretches have cut their insignificant 
initials on it. Are there not rocks enough close by the entrance, on 
which they might carve their memorials of their precious selves, if 
carve they must ? But this profaning of the altar is not the worst. 
One creature has cut his name on the tip of the nose of the northernmost 
colossus : others on the breast and limbs of the Osirides ; and others 
over a large extent of the sculptured walls. 

One of the four god figures in the adytum is Ra, who also occupies 
the niche in the facade over the entrance. Ra is the Sun. He is not 
Amun Ra, the Unnutterable,"^ — the God of gods, — the only god : but 
a chief, as the term Ra seems to express. Phra, (Ra with the article.) 
by us miscalled Pharaoh, means a chief or king among men: and Ra 
is the chief of the visible creation : and here, in this temple, he is the 
principal deity, the others being Khem, or Egypt, Kneph, Osiris and 
Isis. As we go on, we shall perhaps be able to attain some notion of 
the relative offices and dignities of the gods. At the outset, it is neces- 
sary to bear in mind chiefly that the leading point of belief of the 
Egyptians, from the earliest times known to us, was that there was 
One Supreme, — or, as they said, — one only God, who was to be 
adored in silence, (as Jamblichus declares from the ancient Hermetic 
books.) and was not to be named; that most of the other gods were 
deifications of his attributes ; while others, again, as Egypt, the Nile, 
the Sun, the ^loon, the West, &c., were deifications of the powers or 
forces on which the destiny of the Egyptian nation depended. We 
have also to remember that we must check our tendency to suppose 
Allegory in every part of the Egyptian system of theology. It is diffi- 
cult to check this tendency to allegorize, bringing as we do the ideas 
of a long subsequent age to the interpretation of a theological system 
eminently symbolical to its priests, though not to the people at large: 
but we must try to conceive of these Egyptian gods as being, to the 
general Egyptian mind, actual personages, inseparably connected with 
the facts and appearances in which they were believed to exist. If 



• Manetho says that Aniun means concealment."' 



EGYPTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF THE GODS. 



119 



we make the mistake of supposing them merely the names of such 
facts and appearances, and proceed to interpret them by the method of 
allegorical narrative, we shall soon find ourselves perplexed, and at a 
loss: for our view of the facts and appearances of Nature can never be 
like those of the Egyptians, whose science, though unquestionably 
great, lay in a different direction (for the most part) from ours, and 
whose heavens and earth were hardly like the same that we see and 
inhabit. 

For one instance, — in their theory of the formation of the world, 
they believed that when the formless void of eternal matter began to 
part off into realms, the igneous elements ascending and becoming a 
firmament of fiery bodies, and the heavier portions sinking and becom- 
ing compacted into earth and sea, the earth gave out animals, — beasts 
and reptiles ; an idea evidently derived from their annual spectacle of 
the coming forth of myriads of living creatures from the soil of their 
valley, on the subsidence of the flood. When we remember that to 
them the Nile was the sea, and so called by them, and that they had 
before them the spectacle which is seen nowhere else, of the springing 
of the green herb after the separation of the waters from the land, we 
shall see how different their view of the creation must be from any 
which we could naturally form. In this particular case, we have 
adopted their traditions given to us through the mind of Moses ; but 
where we have not the mind of Moses to interpret them to us, we must 
abstain from reading their meanings by any other light than that which 
they themselves afford us. As another instance, how should we alle- 
gorize for them about the West ? What is the West to us ? It is the 
place where the heavenly bodies disappear: and that is the only point 
we have in common with them. With them, the West was the unseen 
state. It was a dreary, unknown region beyond the dark river which 
the dead had to cross. The abodes of the dead v/ere on its verge; and 
those solemn caves were the entrance of the Amenti, the region of 
judgment and retribution. Nothing was heard thence but the bark of 
the wild dog at night ; the vigilant guardian, as they believed, of the 
heavenly abode which the wicked were not to approach.* Nothing 
was seen there but the descent of the sun, faithful to the goddess who 
was awaiting him behind the hills ;t and who, hanging above those 
hills as the brightest of the stars, showed herself the Protectress of the 
Western Shore. Such elements as these which they themselves give 
us, we may take and think over; but if we go on to mix up with them 
modern Greek additions about Apollo, and yet more modern metaphysi- 
cal conceptions, in order to construct allegories as a key to old Egyptian 
theology, we cannot but diverge widely from old Egyptian ideas. And 
what is worse, we shall miss the perception of the indubitable earnest- 
ness of their faith. We have every possible evidence of their unsur- 
passed devoutness: but we shall lose the sense of it if we get into the 
habit of supposing them to have set up images of abstract qualities (as 
abstract qualities are to us) instead of dwelling in constant dependence 



Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, V. 435. t Ibid. IV. 388. 



120 



EASTERN LIFE. 



on living divine personages. We may find symbols everywhere in the 
Egyptian theology; and analogies in abundance: but I do not know 
that any instances of complete or continuous allegory can be adduced. 
When we try to construct such, or think we have found them, we pre- 
sently begin to complain of an intermixture of personages or of offices, 
such as should show us, not that the Egpytian worship was confused, 
but that we do not clearly understand the ideas of the worshipers, and 
must have mixed them with some of our own. 

Kneph, known by his Ram's head, is, as I said, in the adytum with 
Ra; but, though a higher god than Ra, this temple is not dedicated to 
him, but to Ra, as is shown by the appearance of the latter on the 
facade. The deeds of the great Raraases, his adorer, are brought as 
an offering, and presented on the walls. There appears at first some- 
thing incongruous in the mingling, in these temples, of the benign 
serenity of the gods with the fury and cruelty of their warrior wor- 
shipers ; but one soon remembers that it is an incongruity which 
remains to this day, and will doubtless remain till war is abolished. A 
custom so durable as that of consecrating warfare to God must have an 
idea at the bottom of it : and the idea is plain enough here. We find 
the same idea in the mind of this Ramases, and of Moses in his Song 
of deliverance, and of the Red Indian who shakes the scalps of his 
enemies at the end of his spear in his war-dance, and of the Crusaders 
in their thanksgivings for victory over the Saracens, and of our Crom- 
well in Ireland, and in the vindictive stanza of our National Anthem; — 
the idea that power to conquer is given from above, and that the results 
are, therefore, to the glory of him who gives the power. Such a 
method of observance, being natural in certain stages of the human 
mind, is right in its place ; — in a temple of Ramases, for instance. 
The wonder is to find it in the jubilations of Christian armies, in the 
dispatches of Cromwell,* and even in the Prayer-book of the English 
Church, in direct connection with an acknowledgment of the Prince of 
Peace, whose kingdom was not of this world. 

One thing which struck me as strange in this hall of giants was a 
dwarfish statue, without a head. It measured two or three inches less 
in each limb than our middle-size, and was of course very insignificant 
among the Osirides. What it was, and how it came there, we could 
not learn. 

When we looked abroad from the entrance, the view was calm and 
sweet. A large island is in the midst of the river, and shows a sandy 
beach and cultivated interior. The black, peaked hills of the opposite 
desert close in to the south, leaving only a narrow passage for the 
river. — It was nearly evening before we put ofi" from the bank below 
the temple. It had been an animating and delightful day; and I found 
myself beginning to understand the pleasure of "temple-haunting;" a 

* Cromwell to Vice-Admiral Goorlson at Jamaica — "Make yourselves as strong 
as you can to beat the Spaniard, who will doubtless send a good force into the 
Indies. I hope, by this time, the Lord may have blessed you to have hght upon 
some of their vessels, — whether by burning them in their harbors or otherwise.'' — 
CromvoelVs Letters and Speeches, vol. III. p. 15G, 



IBREEM. 



121 



pleasure which so grew upon us, that we felt real grief when it came 
to an end. I, for one, had suspected beforehand that this work would 
soon become one of mere duty or routine : but we found, even before 
we left Nubia, that we were hardly satisfied to sit down to breakfast 
without having explored a temple. 



CHAPTER XL 
IBREEM.— DIRR.—SUBOOA.—DAKKEH—GARF HOSEYN. 

While at breakfast the next morning (January 8th) we drew to 
shore under the great rock on which stands Ibreem, the station of Ro- 
man and Saracenic garrisons, in times when it was necessary to over- 
awe Nubia, and protect the passage southwards. It was an important 
place during the wars of Glueen Candace with the Roman occupants 
of Egypt and Nubia. It appears that the word Candace was probably 
a title and not a proper name, — it being borne by a series of Ethiopian 
queens; — a curious circumstance by itself. Of the Glueen Candace 
who marched against Ibreem (Premnis) we are told by Strabo that she 
was a woman of masculine courage, and had lost an eye. 

We saw from our deck some grottoes in the rock, with paintings in- 
side ; and longed to get at them : but they were so difficult of access, 
(only by a rope) that Mr. E. went alone. They are of the time of the 
great Ramases and three earlier sovereigns of the same period. The 
painting is still vivid ; representing votive offerings. There are some 
very small statues in high relief at the upper end. 

I could not be satisfied without mounting the cliff : and from its sum- 
mit I obtained a view second only to that above Aysoot. I could now 
understand something of the feeling which generates songs in praise of 
Nubia; for many charming spots were visible from this height, — re- 
cesses of verdure, — small alluvions, where the cotton shrub was covered 
with its yellow blossoms, and crops of grain and pulse were springing 
vigorously. On the Arabian side, all looked dreary; the sandy areas 
between its groups of black crags being sprinkled with Sheikhs' tombs, 
and scarcely anything else ; and the only green being on a promontory 
here and there jutting into the river. The fertility was mainly on the 
Lybian shore ; and there it must once have been greater than now. 
Patches of coarse yellow grass within the verge of the desert, and a 
shade of gray over the sand in places, seemed to tell of irrigation and 
drainage now disused. A solitary doum palm rose out of the sand, 
here and there ; and this was the only object in the vast yellow ex- 
panse, till the eye rested on the vast amethyst mountains which bounded 
all to the south and west. Some of these hills advanced and some 
receded, so as to break the line : and their forms were as strange and 
capricious as their disposition. Some were like embankments : some 
like round tumuli : some like colossal tents. The river here was broad 
and sinuous ; and, as far as I could see, on either hand, its course was 



122 



EASTERN LIFE. 



marked by the richest verdure. The freshness, and vastness, and sub- 
lime tranquillity of this scene singularly impressed me. 

The chief interest about the town or fortress was in the mixture of 
relics, — Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Saracenic and Turkish. The winged 
globe, Greek borders and columns, Roman wails, ^losques and Turkish 
fortifications, — all these may be seen in half-an-hour's walk, heaped 
together or scattered about. The modern dwellings appear to be, for the 
most part, made of rough stones, instead of mud ; — the stones lying 
ready to the hand, I suppose, and the mud having to be brought up the 
rock. It is a truty desolate place now. 

In the afternoon, we saw the capital : — Dirr, the capital of Nubia. 
On the bank, we met the governor and his suite, with whom we ex- 
changed salutations. We were walking so slowly, and were so ready 
to be spoken to, that the governor might have declared his wishes to us 
if he had not been shy. He preferred sending a message through our 
Rais, whom we met presently after ; and to whom he said that he was 
ashamed to ask us himself, but he should be much obhged to us to give 
^ him a bottle of wine. Such was the request of the Mohammedan 
governor of the capital of Nubia ! Our dragoman could not keep his 
countenance when he dehvered the message. We did not see his 
excellency again, and he never sent for the wine ; so he did not sin 
against his law by our means. 

Dirr reminded me, more than any other place, of the African villages 
which Mungo Park used to set before us. It has two noble sycamores 
(so-called), one of which is the finest we saw in the country. It had 
a deewan round it, where the old people might sit and smoke, while 
the young sing and dance. The governor's house is partly of burnt 
brick, — quite a token of grandeur here. The other houses were of 
mud, as usual ; — clean and decent. The cemetery shows signs of care, 
— some low w^alls, ornamented at the coping, surrounding some of the 
graves, and pebbles being neatly strewn over others. The roads were 
ankle-deep in dust. The palm-groves, with the evening Hght shining 
in among the stems, were a luxury to the eye. The people looked 
clean and open-faced. Some of them were very light ; and these were 
probably descended from Sultan Selim's Bosnians, like many of the fair- 
complexioned people in the neighborhood of the sultan's garrisons. Many 
articles were offered for sale, — the people hastenmg to spread their 
mats in the dusty road, and the women holding out their necklaces and 
bracelets. One woman asked five piastres for her necklace ; and she 
would have had them : but seeing this, she suddenly raised her de- 
mand to twenty. She is probably wearing that necklace at this mo- 
ment. The gentlemen bought mats for our tents here, giving nine 
piastres [\s. Skd,) apiece for them. 

The temple of Dirr interested us much from the novelty of its area 
and portico being in the open air, when the rest of the temple is in 
the rock. I may observe too that this was the only temple we saw in 
Nubia which stood on the eastern bank. — The area once had eight 
pillars, the bases only of which remain; and of its war pictures nothing 
is visible but faint traces. I made out only a chariot wheel, and a few 



DIRR SUBOOA. 



123 



struggling combatants. We have here the same subjects, and the 
same deity, as at Aboo-Simbil. Ramases the Great consecrates his 
victories to the god Ra, whom he calls his patron, and after whom he 
is named Ra-mses. — The corridor or portico is faced with four Osiride 
pillars. Through it, we enter the rock part of the temple, and find 
ourselves in a hall supported by six square pillars. The walls are 
sculptured over in "intaglio relevato," as it has been called; — that is, 
the outlines are cut in a groove, more or less deep, and the relief of the 
interior rises from the depth of the groove. The walls are now stained 
and blackened ; and they have a mouldering appearance which por- 
tends speedy defacement. But the king and his captives, and his lion 
and his enemies, and his gods and his children, are still traceable. Over 
the lion, which seems a valuable auxiliary in the battles of Ramases, 
and which is here seizing a captive, is written an inscription which says, 
according to Champollion, "the lion, servant of his majesty, tearing his 
enemies to pieces." — Champollion found here a valuable list of the 
names of the children of Ramases, placed according to their age and 
rank. In the small temple at Aboo-Simbil, the king has his son at his 
feet, and his wife has her daughters, with their names and titles in- 
scribed. At this temple of Dirr, the list is apparently made complete, 
there being here seven sons and eight daughters, with declarations of 
their names and titles. 

The adytum is small. The four figures which it once contained are 
gone: but their seat remains, and their marks against the wall. Two 
dark chambers, containing some imperfect sculptures, are on either 
hand; and this is all. This temple is twenty feet deeper in the whole 
than the small one at Aboo-Simbil, but it is inferior in workmanship. 

On our return to the dahabieh, we saw a sight very rare to us now ; 
— a cloudy sky. The sky looked angry, with its crimson flushes, and 
low hanging fiery clouds. We found the people angry too, — upon a 
subject which makes people elsewhere strangely passionate, — a cur- 
rency question. The inhabitants of Dirr have only recently learned 
what money is, having traded by barter till within a very short time. 
They had this evening some notion in their heads which our dragoman 
and Rais thought absurd, about a change in the value of money in the 
next trading village; and they came down to the bank clamoring for 
more money for their mats and necklaces. When all explanation and 
remonstrance failed to quiet them. Alee snatched up a tub, and threw 
water over them: and then arose a din of screams and curses. We 
asked Alee what the curses were : they were merely the rational and 
safe hope that we might all die. 

The crimson flushes faded away from the sky, and the angry clouds 
meked : but we had now no moon except before breakfast, when we 
were glad to see her waste daily. 

There was another temple in waiting for us the next morning (Jan. 
9th) — another temple of the Great Ramases; — that of Subooa. The 
novelty here was a very interesting one ; the Dromos (Course or avenue) 
and its sphinxes. 

The temple is about five hundred yards from the shore; and a few 



124 



EASTERN LIFE. 



dwellings lie between. The sand was deep and soft, but, for once, de- 
lightfully cool to the feet, at this early morning hour. The sand has 
been so blown up against the sphinxes as to leave but little of them 
visible. There are four on each hand, as you go up to the propyla : 
but one is wholly covered; and five others are more or less hidden. 
Two are unburied ; but their features are nearly gone. The head of 
another is almost complete, and very striking in its wise tranquillity of 
countenance. Two rude statues stand beside the sphinxes at the en- 
trance of the dromos ; and two colossi lie overthrown and shattered 
beside their pedestals at the inner end of the dromos, and before the 
propyla. The cement seems to have fallen out between the stones of 
the propyla: but over their mouldering surface are war-sculptures 
dimly traceable: — the conquests of Ramases again. Within the gate- 
way is the hall where ten Osirides are ranged, five on each hand, di- 
viding the hall into three aisles. Here I saw, for the first time, how 
these massive temples were roofed. The ten Osirides supported the 
heavy architrave, whose blocks joined, of course, over the heads of the 
colossi. From this architrave to the outer walls were laid massive blocks 
of stone, which formed the roof. We shall see hereafter that when it 
was desired to light the interior, the roof over the middle aisle was 
raised above that of the side aisles ; and the space left open, except for 
the necessary supporting blocks, or (as at El-Karnak) a range of stone 
gratings. 

The Osirides here are very rude ; composed of stones of various shapes 
and sizes, cemented together. I suppose they were once covered with 
cement; but now they look, at the first glance, like mere fragments of 
pillars. A second look, however, detects the crossed arms, and the cro- 
sier and flagellum. — Of the adytum at the extremity nothing was visible 
but the globe and asps over its door; and the sand was so drifted into 
the hall that we could see over the wall at the upper end. — It will be 
perceived that this is a rude and ruined temple, with no interest be- 
longing to it but its antiquit}?- and its array of sphinxes. 

That evening, we had the promise of another temple for the next 
morning's work. We reached Dakkeh, the Pselche of Strabo, at 10 
p. M. : but we could not moor under the western bank, from the strength 
of the wind, and were obliged to stand across to the other shore. 

The morning of the lOih was bright and cool, and we were early 
ashore, where we saw a good deal besides the temple. A village, 
small, but not so minute as usual, stands near the bank ; and its in- 
habitants are good-looking and apparently prosperous. I saw from the 
top of the propylon, a large patch of fertile land lying back on the edge 
of the Desert, or in it. A canal or ditch carried water from the river 
to this land, where there were two or more sakias to lift it. At least, 
I saw a belt of flourishing castor-oil plants and other shrubs extending 
from the river to where they met the sakias. Further in the Desert, I 
observed more of those gray expanses which tell of cultivable soil be- 
neath, and of former irrigation. This must have been a flourishing 
district once ; and it is not a distressed one now. 

The women were much adorned with beads — blue, black, and white. 



DAKKEH. 



125 



Some would permit us to examine them: others fled and hid them- 
selves behind huts or walls, on our merely looking in their faces : and 
of these none was so swift as the best dressed woman of them all. She 
had looped back, with her blue necklace, the mantle she wore on her 
head, to leave her hands and eyes free for making her bread. Of all 
the scamperers she was the swiftest when our party began to look 
about them. A mother and daughter sat on the ground within a small 
enclosure, grinding millet with the antique quhern : a pretty sight, and 
a dexterously-managed, though slow process. Several of the women 
had brass nose-rings, which to my eyes look about as barbarous and 
ugly as ear-rings ; and no more. When we come to the piercing flesh 
to insert ornaments, I do not see that it matters much whether the ear 
or nose is pierced. The insertion is surely the barbarism. 

While I was on the top of the propylon of Dakkeh, I saw far off* to 
the northwest, a wide stretch of blue waters, with the reflection of 
shores and trees. Rather wondering how such a lake or reach of the 
river could be there, while the Nile seemed to be flowing northeast, 
and observing that these waters were bluer than those of the river, I 
asked myself whether this could possibly be the mirage, by which I 
had promised myself never to be deceived. My first thought was of 
mirage: but a little further study nearly convinced me that it was a 
real water — either a lake left by the inundation, or a reach of the river 
brought there by a sudden bend. I was still sufficiently uncertain to 
wish my friends to come up and see ; though the reflection of the 
groves and clumps on the banks was as perfect as possible in every 
line. Just as I was going down to call my party, I saw a man's head 
and shoulders come up out of the midst of the lake : — a very large 
head and shoulders — such as a man might have who was near at hand. 
The sensation was strange, and not very agreeable. The distant blue 
lake took itself off in flakes. The head and shoulders belonged to a 
man walking across the sand below : and the groves and clumps and 
well-cut banks resolved themselves into scrubby bushes, patches of 
coarse grass, and simple stones. This was the best mirage I have ever 
seen, for its beauty and the completeness of the deception. I saw 
many afterwards in the Desert ; and a very fine one in the plain of 
Damascus : but my heart never beat again as it did on the top of the 
Dakkeh propylon. I had a noble view of the Desert and the Nile 
from that height : and it was only sixty-nine steps of winding stair 
that I had to ascend. These propyla were the watch-towers and bul- 
warks of the temples in the old days when the temples of the Deities 
were the fortifications of the country. If the inhabitants had known 
early enough the advantage of citadels and garrisons, perhaps the 
Shepherd Race might never have possessed the country ; or would, 
at least, have found their conquest of it more difficult than, according 
to Manetho, they did. " It came to pass," says Manetho (as Josephus 
cites him), " I know not how, that God was displeased with us : and 
there came up from the East, in a strange manner, men of an ignoble 
race, who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily sub- 
dued it by their power, without a battle. And when they had our 



126 



EASTERN LIFE. 



rulers in their hands, they burnt our cities, and demolished the tem- 
ples of the gods, and inflicted every kind of barbarity upon the inha- 
bitants, slaying some, and reducing the wives and children of others to 
slavery." It could scarcely have happened that these Shepherds, " of 
an ignoble race," would have captured the country " without a battle," 
and laid hands on the rulers, if there had been such citadels as the 
later built temples, and such watch-towers and bulwarks as these mas- 
sive propyla. Whenever I went up one of them, and looked out through 
the loop-holes in the thick walls, I felt that these erections were for 
military, full as much as religious purposes. Indeed, it is clear that 
the ideas were scarcely separable, after war had once made havoc in 
the valley of the Nile. As for the non-military purposes of these pro- 
pyla ; — they gave admission through the portal in the centre to the 
visitors to the temple, whether they came in the ordinary way, or in 
the processions which were so imposing in the olden times. It must 
have been a fine sight, from the loop-holes or parapets of these great 
flanking towers — the approach or departure of the procession of the 
day — the banners bearing the symbol of god or hero; the boat-shrine, 
borne by the shaven and white-robed priests, in whose hands lay most 
of the power, and in whose heads all the learning, of their age. To 
see them marching in between the sphinxes of the avenij^e, followed by 
the crowd bearing offerings ; — the men with oxen, cakes, and fruits, 
and the women with turtle doves and incense — all this must have been 
a treat to many a sacerdotal watchman at this height. Such an one 
had probably charge of the flags which were hoisted on these occa- 
sions on the propyla. There are, on many of these towers, wide per- 
pendicular grooves, occupied by what look like ladders of hieroglyphic 
figures. These grooves held the flag-staves on festival days, when the 
banners, covered with symbols, were set floating in the air. These 
propyla were good stations from which to give out news of the rising 
or sinking of the Nile : and they were probably also used for observa- 
tories. They were a great acquisition to the country when introduced 
or invented ; and their introduction earlier might, perhaps, as I have 
said, have materially changed the destinies of the nation. The in- 
stances are not few in which these flanking towers have been added to 
a pylon of a much earlier date. 

The interest of this temple is not in its antiquity. It is of various 
dates; and none of them older than the times of the Ptolemies. The 
interest lies in the traces of the different builders and occupants of this 
temple, and in the history (according to Diodorus) of the Ethiopian 
king who built the adytum, — the most sacred part of it. This king 
Ergamun, who lived within half a century before our era, had his 
doubts about the rectitude and reasonableness of the method by which 
the length of kings' reigns was settled in Ethiopia. Hitherto, the 
custom had been for the priests to send word to their brother, the king, 
when the gods wished him to enter their presence : and every king, 
thus far, had quietly destroyed himself, on receiving the intimation. 
Ergamun abolished the custom, — not waiting, as far as appears, for his 
summons, but going up to " a high place" with his troops, when he 



DAKKEH. 



127 



slew the priests in their temple, and reformed some of the institutions 
which no one had hitherto dared to touch. Sir G. Wilkinson points 
out tile fact* that a somewhat resembling- custom still remains in a 
higher region of Ethiopia, where it is thought shocking that a king 
should die a natural death ; that is, like other people. The kings of 
this tribe, when they believe themselves about to die, send word to their 
ministers, who immediately cause them to be strangled. This is re- 
ported by the expedition sent by the present ruler of Egypt to explore 
the sources of the White Nile. 

Though Ergamun was not willing to take the word of the priests for 
the will of the gods, he appears to have been forward in the service of 
his deities, to whom he is seen presenting offerings, and whom he 
proudly acknowledges as his patrons, guardians, and nourishers. The 
old adytum, built by him, looks hoary and crumbling; more so than 
the more ancient temples we have seen: but the sculptures are plainly 
distinguishable. It is much blackened by fires ; but in one corner, 
where the sculptures are protected by a block of stone which has fallen 
across, I found a very clear group, — of the king standing between Ra 
and Thoth, the god of intellect and the arts, concerning whom Socrates 
relates a curious anecdote in the Phsedrust of Plato. The two gods 
are holding vases aloft, from which they pour each a stream of the em- 
blem of hfe immortalizing "the ever-living Ergamun," as his car- 
touche calls him. Under the cornice are four decorative borders, on 
the four sides of the chamber. One gives the emblems of Ra and 
Thoth, — the hawk and ibis, — squatted face to face in successive pairs: 
another, the royal cartouches, guarded by hawks with expanded wings : 
a third the emblem of duration or permanency : while on the one over 
the door are strips of hieroglyphics. The thrones of gods and kings 
have a compartment left in the lower corner of the massive seat, to be 
filled up with devices. Sometimes this is done : sometimes not. In 
this adytum the compartment is occupied by the device taken from 
much older monuments, and see now on the pedestals of the pair at 
Thebes, — the water plants of the god Nilus which are bound up to 
support the royal throne. 

There was enough of color left here to show us how materially the 
effect of the sculpture was made to depend upon it. The difference in 
the clearness of the devices is wonderful when they are seen in a mass, 
and when each compartment or side of a chamber is marked off by broad 
bands of deep color. The supplying of details, and yet more of per- 
spective, by painting, gives a totally different character to the sculptures; 
which difference ought to be allowed for where the colors have disap- 
peared. I am not speaking here of the goodness or badness of the taste 
which united painting and sculpture in the old Egyptian monuments. 
I am only pointing out that it was the Egyptian method of representa- 
tion ; and that their works cannot therefore be judged of by the mere 
outlines. The colors remaining in this chamber are a brilliant blue, a 

* Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 319. 
t PhaBdr. Tayl. Trans, p. 364. 



128 



EASTERN LIFE. 



pale clear green (which survives everywhere and is beautiful), and a 
dull red, — deeper for the garments, lighter for the skins. 

This chamber is completely cased, except the entrance, with more 
modern building. It is shut in, roof and all, as if it had been pushed 
into a box. The old door-way, also the work of Ergamun, is built 
round by a later devotee. The chambers erected by the Ptolemies 
have some modern decorations mixed in with the ancient symbols, — 
such as the olivewreath, a harp of a different make from the old Egyp- 
tian, and the Greek caduceus, instead of the native one. 

Some yet more modern occupants have sadly spoiled this temple. 
The Christians might very naturally feel that they could not go to 
worship till they had shut out from their eyesight the symbols of the 
old faith : and we therefore should not be hard upon them for plaster- 
ing over the walls. We should forgive them all the more readily be- 
cause such plastering is an admirable method of preserving the old 
sculptures. But the Christians must have their saints all about them : 
and there they are, dim, but obvious enough, — with huge wry faces, 
and flaring glories over their heads. Some of the sculptures which have 
been restored, and some which appear never to have been plastered, 
look beautiful beside these daubs. 

In the portico of this temple we first saw an instance of the more 
modern, the Greek, way of at once inclosing and lighting the entrance 
to a temple, — by inter-columnar screens and doorway; called now a 
portico in antis. I do not remember seeing this in any of the ancient 
buildings ; while it is found at Philce, Dendara, Isna, and other Ptole- 
maic erections. It has its beauty and convenience : but it does not 
seem to suit the primitive Egyptian style, where the walls were re- 
lieved of their deadness by sculpture, but, I think, never by breaks. 

There are some Greek inscriptions on different parts of this temple ; 
and two certainly which are not Greek. Whether they are Coptic, or 
the more ancient Egyptian Enchorial writing, it is not for me to say. — 
The outside of the temple is unfinished: and fragments of substantial 
stone wall about it appear like work left, rather than demolished. 
Within one of these walls, I found a passage; a not uncommon dis- 
covery among the massive buildings which might thus conveniently 
communicate by a safe and concealed method. 

This was our work before breakfast. — Another temple was ready for 
us after dinner; — that of the ancient Tutzis, now Garf Hoseyn. 

I walked on shore for a few minutes, while dinner was hastened : and 
saw some agricultural proceedings which were amusing to a stranger. 
Two or three donkeys were bringing down dust and sand from the 
Desert, across a pretty wide tract of cultivated land, to qualify the rich- 
ness of the Nile mud. Their panniers were mere frail-baskets; and 
when they were emptied, the wind (which was strong) carried away a 
good proportion of the contents; and the rest looked such a mere sprin- 
kling, that I admired the patience which could procure enough for a 
whole field. But carts are not known so high up the Nile, nor panniers 
worthy of the name. We had moore'd just under a sakia, whose creak 
was most melancholy. This creak is the sweetest and most heart- 



GARF HOSEYN. 



1^9 



stirring" music in the world to the Nile peasant; just as the Alp-horn is 
to the Swiss. It tells of provision, property, wonted occupation, home, 
the beautiful Nile, and beloved oxen. Any song would be charming 
with such a burden. But to us it was a mere dismal creak; and when 
it goes on in the night, as happens under a thrifty proprietor, I am told 
it is like a human wail, or the cry of a tortured animal. So much for 
the operation of the same sound through different ideas ! The shed of 
this sakia was really pretty; — inhabited by a sleek ox, and a sprightly 
boy-driver; shaded by a roofof millet-stalks, and hung over with white 
convolvulus and the purple bean of this region. Our Dongola sailor 
caught up a little romping boy from among his companions, and brought 
him on board by force. The terror of the child was as great as if we 
had been ogres. I could not have conceived anything like it, and should 
be glad to know what it was that he feared. His worst moment of 
panic seemed to be when we offered him good things to eat; though his 
companions on shore were by that time calling out to him to take what 
we offered. His captor forced some raisins into his mouth; and his 
change from terror to doubt, and from doubt to relish when he began 
to taste his dose, was amusing to see. Raisins were not a bribe to de- 
tain him, however; he was off like a shot, the moment he was released. 
I suppose his adventure will be a family anecdote, for many generations 
to come. 

The first view of the temple from a distance is very striking, — its 
area pillars standing forth from the rock, like the outworks of the en- 
trance gate of a mountain. This temple is of the time of the great 
Ramases, and is dedicated to Phthah, — the god of Artisan Intellect and 
Lord of Truth:* — not the god of Truth, which has its own representa- 
tive deity; but the possessor of truth, by which he did his creative 
works. He is the efficient creator, working in reality and by funda- 
mental principles, and not by accommodation or artifice. The scara- 
basus was sacred to him (though not exclusively) and the frog: the lat- 
ter as signifying the embryo of the human species ; the former, as some 
say, because the beetle prepares a ball of earth, and there deposits its 
eggs, and thus presents an image of the globe and its preparation for 
inhabitancy. However .this may be, here we have the creative god, 
the son of Kneph, the ordaining deity, at whose command he framed 
the universe. It may be remembered that this was the deity to whom, 
according to tradition, the first temple was raised in Egypt; — when 
Menes, having redeemed the site of Memphis from the waters, began 
the city there, and built the great temple of Phthah, renowned for so 
many ages afterwards. — Memphis and this Garf Hoseyn formerly bore 
the same name, derived from their deity : — viz.,Phthahei or Thyphthah. 
His temple has been found by some travelers as imposing as any on the 
Nile. It has been compared even with Aboo-Simbil. This must be 
owing, I think, to the singular crowding of the colossi within a narrow 
space ; and perhaps also to the hoary, blackened aspect of this antique 
speos. The impression cannot possibly arise from any beauty of true 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 250. 

9 



130 



EASTERN LIFE. 



grandeur in the work, — to which the inspiration of the god seems to 
have been sadly wanting. We saw nothing ruder than this temple ; 
which yet is grand in its way. 

The whole of it is within the rock except the area. The area has 
four columns in front, and four Osirides. These colossi are round-faced 
and ugly, and have lost their helmets, and some their heads. One head 
lies topsy-turvy, the placid expression of the face contrasting strangely 
with the agony of its position. The colossi do not hold the crosier and 
flagellum in their crossed hands, as usual; but both in the right hand, 
w^hiie the left arm hangs by the side. On the remnant of the wall of 
the area are some faint traces of sculpture, and two niches, containing 
three figures each. — The striking moment to the visitor is that of en- 
tering the rock. He finds himself among six Osirides, which look 
enormous from standing very near each other; — themselves and the 
square pillars behind them seeming to fill up half the hall. These 
figures are, after all, only eighteen feet high; and of most clumsy work- 
manship ; — with short thick legs, short ill-shaped feet, and more bulk 
than grandeur throughout. I observed here, as at Aboo-Simbil, that 
the wide separation between the great toe and the next seems to tell of 
the habitual use of sandals. 

In the walls of the aisles behind the Osirides, are eight niches, each 
containing three figures, in high relief. In every niche, the figures are 
represented, I think, in the same attitude, — with their arms round one 
another's necks; but they bear different symbols. The middle figure 
of every group is Ra, as patron of Ramases ; and he is invoked as dwell- 
ing at Subooa and Dirr, as well as here ; the three temples being, as we 
have seen, of one group or family. Ra is here called the son of Phthah 
and Athor. The sculptures on the wall are now much blackened by 
the torches of visitors, and perhaps by Arab fires. But the bright 
colors, of which traces yet remain, may have much ameliorated the 
work in its own day. Across the usual corridor, with its usual pair of 
chambers inhabited by bats, Hes the Holy Place. It has an altar in the 
middle, and a recess with four figures. The goddess Anouke, crowned 
with her circlet of feathers, and Athor are here. 

This temple extends only one hundred and thirty feet into the rock. 
Its position and external portico are its most striking features. 

We returned by the village, and certainly should not have found out 
for ourselves that the people are the savages they are reputed to be. 
They appeared friendly, cheerful, and well-fed. We looked into some 
houses, and found the interiors very clean. Many of the graves of 
their cemetery have jars at the head, which are duly filled with water 
every Friday, — the Mohammedan Sabbath. The door of a yard which 
we passed in the village had an iron knocker, of a thoroughly modern 
appearance. I wonder how it came there. 

There was a strong wind this evening; and the boat rolled so much 
as to allow of neither writing nor reading in comfort. We were not 
sorry, therefore, to moor below Dendoor, at 10 p. m., and enjoy the 
prospect of a quiet night, and another temple before breakfast. 



DENDOOR. 



131 



CHAPTER XII. 

DENDOOR.— KALAB--SHEH.—BIGGEH.—PHIL(E.— LEAVING NUBIA. 

Of the temple of Dendoor there is little to say, as it is of Roman 
time, and therefore, only imitative Egyptian. It has a grotto behind, 
in the rock ; and this grotto contains a pit ; so I suppose it is a place 
of burial. The temple is sacred to the great holy family of Egypt, 
Osiris, Isis, and Horus ; and the sacred chamber contains only a ta- 
blet, with a sculpture of Isis upon it, and a few hieroglyphic signs. 
The quantity of stones heaped in and about this little temple is remark- 
able. 

I took a walk over the rising grounds behind till I lost sight of the 
temple and our boat and people ; and never did I see anything wilder 
than the whole range of the landscape. There was a black craggy 
ravine on either hand, which must occasionally, I should think, be the 
passage of torrents. There are rains now and then, however rarely, 
in this country ; and when they do come, they are violent. Some of 
the tombs at Thebes bear mournful witness of the force with which 
torrents rush through any channels of the rocks that they can find. 
Not only were these ravines black, but the whole wide landscape, ex- 
cept a little peep of the Nile, and. a bit of purple distance to the north, 
and two lilac summits to the south, peeping over the dark ridge. No- 
thing more dreary could well be conceived, unless it be an expanse of 
polar snow ; yet it was exquisitely beautiful in point of color — the 
shining black of the whole surface, except where the shadows were 
jet, the bright green margin of the inch of river ; the white sheikh's 
tomb behind the palms on that tiny spot ; and the glowing amethyst of 
the two southern summits — these in combination were soft and brilhant 
to a degree inconceivable to those who have not been within the tropics. 
There was a bracing mild wind on this ridge, which, by reviving the 
bodily sense, seemed to freshen the outward world ; and truly sorry I 
was to return. This was my last gaze upon tropical scenery too. We 
were to leave the tropic this afternoon, at Kalab'-sheh. 

I suppose even such an out-of-the-way region as this may be en- 
lightened now and then as to foreign customs by the return of wander- 
ing traders or voyagers. I saw to-day on the eastern shore a house 
which might have been built by an European ; its front neatly painted 
red and white ; its doors yellow ; and its windows of glass. It was 
placed with its back to the prevailing north wind ; and it had a regu- 
lar approach between buttresses. Two houses near had glass windows 
also. Some adventurous Nubian has come home a great man, proba- 
bly, and is astonishing the natives with his outlandish ways. 

While we were at dinner off Kalab'-sheh, the people came down to 
the shore, and made a market. When their wares were ranged, they 



132 



EASTERN LIFE. 



were a pretty sight — the baskets of henneh, the spears and daggers, 
and the curiosities dug out from the temples. 

Having happily some idea what to look for here, we hastened to the 
small speos of Beyt-el-Wellee, a quarter of a mile from the large tem- 
ple, while we yet had full daylight. The view from the entrance is 
beautiful, commanding the recess of fertile ground which seems to flow 
in from the river, and fill the angle between the hills. This recess was 
clustered with palms which were softly swaying their shadowy heads 
below us.. The opposite shore was of the bright yellow of evening; 
and to the right, below us, stood the massive temple of Kalab'-sheh, 
with its outworks of heaped stones, and its traces of terraces, flights of 
steps, and quays, all the way down to the river. This little rock-tem- 
ple of Beyt-el-Wellee is as interesting as anything in Egypt, except 
the remains of the First Period. It is full of the glory of the great 
Ramases again. But it is not dedicated to Ra, but to Amunra — not to 
the Sun of the Universe, but to the Spiritual Sun — the universal cen- 
tre of Being — the Unknown and Unutterable — the God of Gods. With 
him is joined Kneph, the ram-headed god, the animating Spirit of the 
creation, which gives Life to its organized beings — thus working toge- 
ther with Phthah, the creator, or Artisan-Intellect. The third deity of 
this little temple is the virgin goddess Anouke, the goddess of Purity 
and Household ties. She appears very frequently in the more ancient 
temples, and was especially honored in this southern region, where she 
becomes quite familiar, with her feather crown, her sceptre of lotus in 
one hand, and the symbol of Life in the other. 

The approach to the cave entrance is between quarried rocks covered 
with sculptures of extraordinary merit ; of which I shall have to speak 
presently. The temple itself consists of only two chambers i-— the 
outer hall and the Holy Place. At first, one's impression is that one 
can see nothing, except the two elegant polygonal pillars which were 
supporting this roof ages before they gave the hint of the early Doric. 
A few hieroglyphic signs on the faces of these pillars engage the eye; 
which is then led on to distinguish bands of color ; and presently to 
perceive that the walls have been divided into compartments by mar- 
gins of color, and rows of hieroglyphic signs. Some dim appearance 
of large figures, under the films of dust and mould, is next perceived; 
and in the inner chamber, it was plain, as Mr. E. pointed out to me, 
that one figure had been washed. There were the tricklings of the 
water, from the feet to the ground; and the figure was, though dim, so 
much brighter than everything else, that I felt irresistibly tempted to 
try to cleanse a bit of the wall, and restore to sight some of its ancient 
paintings. We sent down to the boat — about half a mile, for water, 
tow, soap, and one or two of the crew ; and while the rest of my party 
went to explore the great modern temple, I tucked up my sleeves, 
mounted on a stone, and began to scrub the walls, to show the boy 
Hasan what I wanted him to do. I would let no one touch the wall, 
however, till I had convinced myself that no color would come off. 
The colors were quite fast. We might rub with all our strength with- 
out injuring them in the least. It was singularly pleasant work, bring- 



I 



BEYT-EL-WELLE. 



133 



ing forth to view these elaborate old paintinj^s. The colors came out 
bright and deep as on the day they were laid on — so many thousand 
years ago ! Every moment, the details of the costume and features 
showed themselves on the kingly figure I was unveiling; the red and 
yellow pattern on the crown, and the flagellum : the armlets, bracelets, 
belts, and straps ; the ends of the sash ; the folds of the garment, and 
its wrapping over above the knee; the short mantle, the vest, the tip- 
pet or necklaces, and the devices of the throne. It began to grow dusk 
before we had finished two figures; and, indeed, I cannot say that we 
completely finished any; for a slight filminess spread over the paintings 
as they dried, which showed that another rubbing was necessary. I 
did long to stay a whole day, to clean the entire temple ; but this could 
not be done. I was careful to give a dry-rubbing to our work before 
we left it, that no injury might afterwards arise from damp; and I trust 
our attempt may yet be so visibly recorded on the walls as to induce 
some careful traveler to follow our example, and restore more of these 
ancient paintings. 

The sculptures on the outside, on either hand of the approach, are 
now quite destitute of color; and it does not seem to be wanted here, so 
finished are the details. — On one side we see Ramases on his throne, 
receiving a world of wealth in the shape of tribute from the conquered 
Ethiopians. The Prince of Gush and his two children, all captives, 
are brought up by the eldest son of the conqueror; the names of all the 
parties being affixed in hieroglyphic characters. We see piles of os- 
trich's eggs, bags of gold, and ornaments; and array of fans, elephants' 
teeth, leopard skins, and other southern wealth; a troop of Ethiopians 
bringing an Oryx (antelope), a lion, oxen and gazelles: and in the 
lower fine of tribute-bearers, we see apes and a camelopard. These 
articles are admirable likenesses; and the whole procession is a most 
lively spectacle. But the battle-scene at the outer end is remarkably 
interesting, from the representation given of the wildness of the enemy's 
country. The foe are flying into the woods ; and a woman cooking 
under a tree is warned by her little son that the conqueror is coming. 
A wounded chief (of whom she may be the wife), is carried by his sol- 
diers; and a boy is throwing dust on his head, in token of despair. 
The king and his two sons are in separate chariots, each with his cha- 
rioteer: and the king is discharging his arrows as he goes. — Else- 
where on these walls, the king is his own charioteer, having the reins 
fastened round his waist, that his arms may be left free. The animals 
are, as usual in these old sculptures, admirably done ; the heads of the 
oxen appearing to my eye as good in their quiet way as the bull of 
Paul Potter, in his more vehement mood. 

The foe on the opposite wall is supposed to be some people in Ara- 
bia Petraea; — Eastern at all events. We have the conqueror again, on 
his throne, with his lion reposing at its base; in his car; in single com- 
bat, and in the act of slaying his foes. We have a walled city; and 
the other accompanim.ents of these war-pictures: but the Ethiopian 
tribute, and the woman cooking at her fire in the wood are more inte- 
resting to the observer of this day. 



i 



134 



EASTERN LIFE. 



I was struck by the extraordinary grace of some of the objects about 
this temple. The lamp used in the offerings to the deities is beauti- 
ful; — a delicate hand holding a cup from which the flame issues; 
while an orifice at the elbow-end of the lamp is receiving the oil. — In 
one of the groups in the adytum, I saw the first instance I had met 
with (except in the rude sculptures of Garf Hoseyn) of a departure 
from the severity of attitude usually observed. The union of the deities 
in the reception of homage is marked by the arm of the one hanging 
over the shoulder of the other. 

We are told by Sir G. Wilkinson that this temple has been the abode, 
at some time, of a Mohammedan hermit.* Some have supposed that 
the Christians have been here, obliterating the sculptures. I saw no 
traces of them; and I think the clouding-over of the paintings is no 
more than may be accounted for by lapse of years, and, possibly, a less 
dry situation than that of many of the old monuments. We must re- 
member that this temple is more than three thousand years old. 

On leaving the shadowy specs, I found there was still daylight 
enough for a survey of the renowned great temple of Kalab'-sheh. I 
was glad to go over it, and admire its magnificence, and the elegance 
of many parts; and be amazed at its vastness; but it is too modern to 
interest us much here. It was founded and carried on — (not quite to 
completion) — by one after another of the Csesars: and it is therefore 
not truly Egyptian. The most interesting circumstance to me was 
that here we could form some judgment of the effect of the Egyptian 
color-decoration : for here there were two chambers in fine preserva- 
tion, except where water had poured down from the massive lion-head 
spouts (Roman) and had washed away the colors. The relief to the 
eye of these strips of pure sculpture was very striking. My conclu- 
sion certainly was, from the impression given by these two chambers, 
that, however valuable color may be for bringing out the details, and 
even the perspective, of sculptured designs, any large aggregate of it 
has a very barbaric appearance. — Still, we must not judge of the old 
Egyptian painting by this Roman specimen. The disk of Isis is here 
painted deep red, — the color of the ordinary complexion. The pale 
green and brilliant blue of the ancient times are present; and I saw 
here, and here only, a violet or plum-color. 

As for the rest, this temple is a heap of magnificent ruin; magnifi- 
cent for vastness and richness; but not for taste. One pillar standing 
among many overthrown, — rich capitals toppled down among rough 
stones ; and such mounds of fragments as make us wonder what force 
could have been used to cause such destruction, — these are the interest 
of this temple. It may be observed, too, that the adytum has no figure 
at the end, and that it appears never to have been finished. It is a 
singular spectacle, — the most sacred part unfinished, while the capitals 
of the outer columns, with their delicate carvings of vine-leaves and 
tendrils twining among the leaves of the doum palm, are overthrown 
and broken ! 



* Wilkinson's Modem Egypt and Thebes, II. p. 313, (note.) 



KALAB-SHEH. 



135 



This temple is believed to have stood on the site of an older one, 
from some ancient memorials being found on a few of the stones em- 
ployed : but the existing building was begun in the reign of Augustus, 
carried on by some of his successors, and never finished.' — As it was 
the largest temple in Nubia, the Christians naturally laid hands on it; 
and a saint, and several halos look out very strangely from among the 
less barbarous heathen pictures on the walls of the room within the 
outer hall. 

This evening we descended the rapids of Kalab'-sheh, and had left 
the tropic: and a cold, blowing evening it was.- — Early next morning, 
the three pylons of the Dabod temple — its distinguishing feature, — 
stood out clear on their sandy platform. These pylons are almost the 
only interesting thing about this temple, which is of the time of the 
early Ptolemies, and carried on by Augustus and Tiberius. It never 
was finished; and now its massive walls are cracked and bending in 
all directions. The soil below seems washed or actually grubbed out, 
so as to endanger the mass above. 

There is a mummy-pit in the brow of the hill, a quarter of a mile 
behind. I went to see what the little clouds of dust meant, and found 
some men and boys pulling out human legs and arms for our gratifica- 
tion. I M^as much better pleased with the view I obtained from the 
next ridge, whence I saw to the south-west the sandstone quarries 
which furnished the material for the temple. The recesses and pro- 
jections of the stone looked as sharp cut as ever. 

We were now only six miles from Philoe, where we were to remain 
twenty-four hours. After posting up our journals, we had enough to 
do in admiring the beauty of the scener5^ which we had seen before 
only in the vagueness of moonlight. I think the five miles above 
Philoe the most beautiful on the Nile, and certainly the most varied, — 
with the gorges among the rocks, the black basalt contrasting with the 
springing wheat and the yellow sands, and the dark green palms; — 
and soon, Philo? opening on the sight, and its hypsethral temple, (built 
to look beautiful from hence,) setting up its columns against the sky: 
and all this so shut in by coves and promontories, and the water rendered 
so smooth by its approach to the dam of the islands, as to make of the 
whole an unique piece of lake scenery. Two mosques, a convent, and 
a sheikh's tomb on a pinnacle of the rock, gave character to the scene: 
and so did a woman on the shore, with her veiled face and water-jar, 
reminding us that we were re-entering Egypt Proper. I could not 
bear to miss any part of this approach to Philoe; and I therefore carried 
my dinner up to the deck, and received all that singular imagery, 
never to lose it again while I live. 

At four o'clock we were close upon Philoe : but the island of Big- 
geh, also sacred, looked tempting, and we turned towards it, to explore 
its remains before sunset. The black rocks round show inscriptions in 
great numbers : and these are full of light and interest. Some are of 
the Pharaohs of a very early time ; actually inscribed by the tributary 
kings who reigned at Thebes during the dominion of the Shepherds ; 
and others of the great monarchs who drove out the Shepherds, and 



136 



EASTERN LIFE. 



raised the glory of Egypt to its highest point. Some inscribe merely 
their names — their cartouches, which catch the eye on every hand. 
Some append to these the declaration that they came in pilgrimage to 
the gods of these holy places. Some carve a record of the granite 
blocks they have taken for their public works ; and others leave a de- 
claration of their victories over the Ethiopians. What an inestimable 
country this is, where the very rocks by the wayside offer indisputable 
materials of history to you as you pass by ! 

The other remains on Biggeh are forlorn enough. Two columns 
exist of a temple of the Ptolemies re-built upon a very old Pharaonic 
foundation. Fragments of sculpture lie about : and one pictured wall 
forms the side of a sordid Arab hut. The Christians have broken 
away parts of two great sculptured blocks to lodge an arch, which 
looks hideous. Wherever, in these two islands, the intaglios are filled 
up with mud, and the reliefs and paintings covered with clay, it is the 
work of the Christians, who took possession of the temples of the re- 
gion for their worship. 

I could not leave the high grounds of this island while the sun lighted 
the map-hke expanse below and around me. The chaotic rocks, the 
desert, river, and distant settlements would have absorbed me at any 
other time : but now, to the south, lay the Holy Island, beyond the 
gold-crowned palms which waved below my feet, and beyond the piled 
rocks and clear shadowy river which interposed. The plan of its edi- 
fices was clear under my eye ; and their superb range was fully dis- 
played, as the sunlight was leaving their colonnades, moment by mo- 
ment, and at last lingering only on the summits of the propyla. When 
the last ray melted into the glow which succeeds the sunset, v/e hast- 
ened down to the boat, and rowed over to Phiice, to the eastern cove, 
below the hypsethral temple, where we had moored this day fortnight, 
on our way up. There was still time, before the twilight was gone, for 
a run up to the temples. I came down again, amazed at the vastness 
of the sculptures on the propyla, and oppressed by a sense of the mass 
and the intricacy of the edifices. I felt, as I had done twice before, lost 
among them. But this perplexity was dispelled, and the whole ar- 
rangement made clear, by the careful study of the next day. 

We all rose early on the morning of the 13th of January; and by 
half-past seven, we were up at the temples, having breakfasted, and' 
sent away our kandjia, to descend the Cataract, and transfer the stores 
to the dahabieh. 

I spent the first two hours quite alone — setting out to learn the plan 
of the temples, but lingering at almost every step, impressed by the 
majesty of the appareil of worship, or bewitched by the beauty of the 
details of the adornments. 

The confusion of temples of which travelers cotYiplain cannot arise 
from their number. The remains consist of the great temple of Isis 
with its accessories : a little chapel to Alhor ; a western chapel where 
the god Nilus is much honored ; a little chapel, modern, toEsculapius; 
the hypaethral temple vulgarly called Pharaoh's Bed; and various edi- 
fices of approach from the river. This is not so much to learn ! The 



PHILCE. 



137 



confusion seems to ^me rather to arise from the absence of symmetry 
which, remarkable elsewhere in Egypt, is singularly striking here. 
I ventured upon making a plan, by the eye and a rough measurement, 
that I might not hereafter disbelieve the extraordinary perverseness of 
the arrangements. As this plan lies before me, I see that the propyla 
do not agree with each other; nor with the colonnade in the avenue; 
nor with those in the area. No two chambers are of the same size. 
The doorways do not answer to each other, any more than the columns. 
There is a total want of coherence of parts. This is not only an im- 
pediment to understanding the edifices, but it causes incessant vexation 
to the eye, which is baulked of a view through gateways, and offended 
by twists and false measurements. This peculiarity once allowed for, , 
I do not think the group of temples difficult to understand. . V" 

The first requisite to a fit survey of the Holy Island and its remains, 
is a knowledge of why the place is so holy. And in order to under- 
stand why the place is so holy, it is necessary to be informed of the 
history and offices of Osiris. I wish I might hope that any of my 
readers — any who have not traveled in Egypt — could be at all im- 
pressed with the seriousness of this subject. To my mind, no subject 
is so solemn as that of the faith of any race of men — their sustaining 
and actuating faith — be its objects what they may. And the objects of 
a sustaining and actuating faith must always be solemn and noble. 
Whatever their names may be, they have in them a majesty and en- 
dearment which place completely in the wrong all who ignorantly ab- 
hor or despise them. How ignorant and how guilty we ourselves may 
have been in our careless contempt of the idolatries of the world, we 
may come to perceive, when we have learned to do as we would be 
done by in separating the Ideas of any faith from its outward celebra- 
tions — its philosophy from its corruptions; — and when we become 
wise enough to discern the close relations which we have now reason 
to believe exist among all the effectual faiths which have ever operated 
widely upon mankind. How serious a research that is which would 
discover the attributes and functions of ancient deities, one may partly 
feel in contrasting the glibness with which the hallowed name of Osiris 
slips off the modern tongue with the reserve of old Herodotus, who, like 
other serious-minded men of his time, could not bring himself to name 
Osiris at all. I am aware of something of the same contrast in myself. 
Before I went to Egypt, I talked of the deities of that old nation as 
school children talk of Neptune and Apollo; as once fanciful person- 
ages who have become mere poetical images. It is very different now. 
As I read old Herodotus on the spot, the awe which made him dumb 
where I most wished him to speak, thrilled through me. There the 
calm benign gods were no poetical images, but embodied aspirations of 
the loftiest powers of man. There, the altars were no mere blocks of 
disenchanted stone, but the still inviolable depositories of the reverence, 
gratitude, and hope of whole races of thoughtful human beings, who 
here acknowledged One unutterable Eternal Being, through whose 
Attributes they lived, and moved, and had their being. We are apt, 
at home, to suppose that language to us sacred from religious associa- 



138 



EASTERN LIFE. 



tions, is either exclusively ours, or could not have meant the same to 
people living before our form of faith arose. But what should we say 
to such a supposition on the part of a more advanced race succeeding- 
ourselves ? Ought not they to admit the sacredness to us of our sacred 
language ? And are we not bound to admit the sacredness to the old 
Egyptians of the devotional language which we find inscribed in the 
Holy Chambers of their temples, and which is delivered to us from out 
of the records of their faith ? This is not claiming parity of value for 
their objects of faith and ours. It has nothing to do with the compara- 
tive elevation, purity, and promise of any two faiths. It is merely a 
claim that the Old Egyptians should be regarded as having a faith ; a 
faith to which they might refer the loftiest ideas of a high order of in- 
tellect, and in which they might repose the affections of their common 
human heart. Without a clear admission of this much, in that spirit of 
brotherhood which should unite us with the distant in time as truly as 
with the distant in space, there is no use in inquiring into the history 
and offices of Osiris, or of any other object of worship. 

Different districts of the great valley assigned their higher honors to 
different gods : but Osiris, Isis, and their son Horus were generally 
held in the deepest reverence. I believe that, except the Supreme, 
Osiris was the only deity who was never named. When Herodotus 
has described the scourgings and lamentings which follow the sacrifices 
at the feast of Isis, he adds* that it is not permitted to him to tell in 
whose honor they scourge themselves and lament. And again, in 
describing the images of the dead, prepared for the guidance of the 
embalming process, Herodotus says,t that the best represents, as he is 
told. Him whose name he has an objection to utter. And thus he 
always speaks of Osiris, by reverent allusion, and never by name. The 
reason of this peculiar sacredness of Osiris, above all gods but the Su- 
preme, was his office of Judge of the living and the dead. That which 
made him so universally and eminently adored was his being the; repre- 
sentation, or rather the incarnation, of the Goodness of the Supreme. 
The pluraHty of deities in Egypt arose from the practice, for popular 
use, of deifying the attributes of the Supreme God. We have thus 
seen his creative Spirit or Will embodied in one god ; and the creative 
art, or Artisan Intellect, in another ; and we shall meet with more. 
His primary attribute, his Goodness, was embodied in Osiris,^ who left 
his place in the presence of the Supreme, took a human form, (though 
not becoming a human being), § went about the world doing good to 
men, sank into death in a conflict with the Power of Evil ;|| rose up to 
spread blessings over the land of Egypt and the world, and was ap- 
pointed Judge of the Dead,^ and Lord of the heavenly region, while 
present with his true worshipers on earth, to do them good. Such 
were the history and functions of Osiris, as devoutly recorded by the 
Egyptians of several thousand years ago. And here, in Philoe, was his 
sepulchre, where the faithful came in pilgrimage, from the mighty 



* Herod. II. 01. 

J Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. ISO. 
II Ibid. IV. 189. 



t Ibid. ]I. S(3. 
§ Ibid. IV. 317. 
M Ibid. IV. 314. 



PHILCE. 



139 



Pharaoh to the despised goat herd, for a long course of centuries. He 
was especially adored for other reasons than his benefactions : as being 
the only manifestation on earth of the Supreme God. This made him 
superior to the eight great gods, after whom he ranked on other ac- 
counts.* How the manifestation was made in a human form without 
an adoption of human nature, was one of the chief Egyptian mysteries ;t 
the ideas of which will now, I fear, never be offered to our apprehen- 
sion. Upon his death, he passed into the region of the dead, (borne 
there, as the sculptures represent, by the four genii of Hades) — and 
then, having passed through its stages, was raised to the function of 
Judge.J 

Among the allusive names of Osiris were those of " Opener of 
good,"§ " Manifester of grace," and " Revealer of truth :" and the de- 
scription of him was, in the ancient words, " full of grace and truth. "|| 
He obtained the victory after his death over the Evil Principle which 
had destroyed him :^ and it was in his name, which they then assumed, 
that the virtuous, after judgment, entered into the state of blessedness 
which they shared with him.** The departed, men and women alike, 
were called Osiris: this spiritual name betokening that they were now 
in that state where sex was abolished, where no marriage existed, but 
human beings had become pure as the heaven-born in habitants. ft 

When it is said that Osiris was the only manifestation of the Supreme 
upon earth, it must be understood that this means the only manifesta- 
tion by a native heavenly resident. For all animated beings were 
supposed to be emanations from the Centre of Life.J:}: The great 
emanation doctrine which has spread so far over the world was cer- 
tainly a chief point of faith in Egypt at a very early date; and it is 
believed that Pythagoras, recognizing it in all their observances which 
were expositions of doctrine, adopted it from them, and thence sent it 
on through distant countries and future ages. Plutarch ascribes to the 
belief of this doctrine the peculiar observances with regard to animals 
in Egypt. The passage is too well known to need citing here : but it 
is- valuable, not only as testifying to this great fact of the Egyptian 
mind, but as showing that persons comparatively ancient were wiser 
than too many of ourselves in seeing in their practice of what we call 
Brute worship something deeper and more serious than we have been 
taught to look for. Plutarch cites Herodotus as saying that whatever 
beings have been endowed with life and any measure of reason are to 
be regarded as effluxes, or portions of the supreme wisdom which 
governs the universe ; so that the Deity is not less strikingly repre- 
sented in these than in images of any kind made by the hand of man. 
Porphyry declares " the Egyptians perceived that the Divinity entered 
not the human body only, and that the Soul dwelt not, while on earth, 
in man alone, but passed in a measure through all animals." Thus 
Osiris was not the only manifestation of the universal Soul: and so far 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 317. f Ibid. IV. 317. 

J Plutarch de Iside, s. 35, cited by Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, IV. 320. 

§ Pint, de Is. I. s. 42. || Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 189. 

•iT Ibid. IV. 320. Ibid. IV. 320. ff Ibid. IV. 31 G. Ibid. IV. 316. 



A 



140 



EASTERN LIFE. 



shared the lot of the humblest worm bred in the mud of the Nile ; but 
he was the only member of the heavenly society, the only one of the 
sons of the Supreme, who came upon earth to make him known : and 
he thus took rank above them all. 

It is impossible not to perceive that Osiris was to the old Egyptians 
what the Messiah is to be to the Jews ; and what another has been to 
the Christians. The nature, character and offices of Osiris, and the 
sacred language concerning him are so coincident with those most 
interesting to Christians as to compel a very careful attention on the 
part of inquirers into Egyptian antiquities. Various solutions of the 
extraordinary fact have been offered. Some who hold to the Hteral 
historical truth of the book of Genesis suggest, as their conjecture, that 
Noah may have foreknown everything relating to the coming of Christ, 
even to the language which should be used concerning him by sacred 
writers: and that his descendants may have communicated all this to 
the ancient Egyptians, who made a God out of the prophecy and its 
adjuncts.* Others have endeavored to make out such personal inter- 
course between Pythagoras and some of the Hebrew prophets on the 
one hand, and the Egyptian priests on the other, as might account for 
the parallelism in question.! Others would have us understand it by 
concluding that the latest Egyptian priests were disciples of Plato, and 
put their own Platonising interpretations on the character of Osiris, as 
the Platonising Christians did on that of Christ. Others again, who 
see that ideas are the highest subject of human cognizance, the history 
of ideas the only true history, and a common holding of ideas the only 
real relation of human beings to each other, believe that this great con- 
stellation of ideas is one and the same to all these different peo- 
ples ; was sacred to them all in turn, and became more noble and more 
glorious to men's minds as their minds became strengthened by the 
nourishment and exercise of ages. It is a fact which ought to be at- 
tended to while considering the various solutions offered, that the cha- 
racter and offices of Osiris were certainly the same in the centuries 
which preceded the birth of Abraham, — in the very earliest times known 
to us, — as after the death of Pythagoras and Plato. This is proved by 
the sculptures in the oldest monuments. We see in the tombs cotem- 
porary with the Pyramids that Osiris was to men then living the same 
benefactor and final judge that he was to the subjects of the Ptolemies.^ 

As Osiris was the manifestation of the goodness of the Supreme 
Being, he was naturally identified with the most obvious benefits for 
which the old Egyptians desired to be thankful : and to them the great- 
est of benefits was the Nile. Hence arose one of their most beautiful 
traditionary fictions; that his body was deposited in the cataract, whence 
he arose once a year, to spread blessings over the earth. Hence he 
was called also the author of agriculture, as the inundation may be well 
considered. Hence he is made to say, in one of the most ancient in- 
scriptions, that he is the eldest son of time, and cousin to the day ; and 

* Wilkinson s Ancient Egyptians, IV. ISS. 

t Bayle, Art. Pythagoras, Note h. 

j Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 323. 



PHILCE. 



141 



that there is no place where he has not been, distributing his benefits 
to all mankind.* 

It appears that the antagonism of Good and Evil was not very early- 
recognized in Egypt. At first, Typho was called the brother of Osiris ; 
and good and evil were supposed to be nearly related, and both claim- 
ing homage, as necessary and therefore worthy of acceptance. When 
the god of Evil came to be hated, his sacrifices began to be discontinued, 
and we even find his images carefully obliterated. He then became 
the murderer of Osiris, and was in league with Antoe, of whom we 
have before seen something, and who represented the sand of the De- 
sert. This was an old feud, — this that we witness in our day, between 
the Nile and the Desert ! Osiris declares himself, in the old inscrip- 
tion, "cousin to the day;" and Typho was the god of the Eclipse. 
Thus, as the old Egyptian philosophy declined, and the corruption 
crept in which is the invariable consequence of polytheism, the brother- 
hood of the two attributes grew into antagonism, and Typho became the 
hated and ugly monster that we see him in the sculptures, — the Satan 
of the Nile valley, with the ravaging hippopotamus for his symbol. 

It was in his office of judge of the dead that Osiris was presented 
to the minds of Egyptian guests at their banquets, in the mode of a 
mummy, which was carried round, as Herodotus says,t after the feast, 
to remind every one of his mortality. His name might not be uttered ; 
but his idea was to be ever present. The Greeks gave their own turn 
to this observance, as Anacreon shows us, and used this memento mori 
as an incentive to the more eager pursuit of transient pleasure. The 
Egyptians were more serious minded, and at the same time more cheer- 
ful in their views of death. Their view seems to have been that which 
Thales is wondered at for having professed, and which he probably 
adopted while in Egypt, that there is nothing to choose between life 
and death. The accounts of the saying uttered during the ceremony 
vary, — as perhaps the exhortations themselves varied in course of time. 
According to Herodotus, it was " Look at this man : you will be like 
him when you are dead. Drink now, and enjoy yourselves." Plu- 
tarch gives it more gravely. The guest was told that men ought " to 
love one another, and avoid those evils which tend to make them con- 
sider life too long, when in reality it is too short." Whatever was said, 
Osiris was offered to the eye, with his insignia of judgment, the crosier 
and fiagellum, in his hands. 

Osiris was said to have forty-nine titles: Isis ten thousand.:}: We see 
her now in her temple at Philoe, as the mourning widow of Osiris, and 
the mother of Horus. She was the daughter of Seb, or Time; and 
therefore the sister of Osiris: and it is said that the practice, not un- 
common among the priests, and far too common among the Ptolemies, 
of marrying their sisters, arose from the example of this pair ; — from its 
being supposed that such marriages must be fortunate. We sometimes 
see Isis as the Land of Egypt, when Osiris is rising from the river. 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 323, 

f Herod. II. 78. J Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 321, 317. 



142 



EASTERN LIFE. 



She is the Protectress of Osiris, covering his corpse with her wings. 
This is a beautiful representation of her, and one which I was never 
tired of meeting. Sometimes she is nursing Horus. But her most 
important office is that of colleague of Osiris in the judgment of the 
dead. From her, in this office, the Greeks directly derived their 
Hecate ; her office being not only the same, but her name standing 
inscribed, at this day, "Isis, the potent Hekte."* As the bringer to 
judgment, she is sometimes called the Giver of Death, and crowned 
with the asp. Herodotus says that the Egyptians regarded Isis as the 
greatest of all the divinities.! It might be so in his age: and her fes- 
tivals, as witnessed by him, were no doubt very majestic : but there is 
no reason to believe that in an older time she was so much honored as 
the deities who represented a higher Ideal. — The heifer was held sacred 
to Isis; and no heifer was ever permitted to be slaughtered in Egypt. f 
The young Horus, her infant, was adopted by the Greeks and called 
Harpocrates, and made the god of silence by his finger being on his hps. 
The Egyptian "Hor," however, seems to signify childhood, in the 
sense of entrance or re-entrance upon life ; of production or reproduc- 
tion. § In Hades, he appears seated on a lotus, before the throne of 
Osiris, and in front of the candidate for judgment. He is the child, or 
new life, of the region beyond the tomb. The lotus, on which the child 
is seated, is reproductive in a singular manner, as Payne Knight tells 
us, II — by new flowers springing from seeds which could not escape 
from their sheaths. Isis is perpetually seen holding the stem of the 
lotus : and the lotus pillar, common everywhere in Egypt, abounds es- 
pecially at PhiicE. It is a remarkable fact, told us by Payne Knight, 
that Isis, with Horus on her lap, is found on a Lapland drum, and 
also in ancient Muscovite worship: and with a golden heifer for a 
symbol of worship, or idol.^ The Lapland goddess Isa or Disa is 
symbolized also by a pyramid, with the Egyptian emblem of Life (the 
most sacred of Egyptian symbols) on the apex.** How the ancient faiths 
and their symbols became spread over the world, from the Ganges to 
Yucatan, is a question too deep and wide for us to enter on here: but 
if any portion had a better chance than another of diffiision by the in- 
tercourses of men, it was such as related to Osiris, Isis and Horus ; 
not only by their congeniality with universal ideas, but by means of 
the concourse of strangers who for many centuries came in pilgrimage 
to these holy islands of Biggeh and Philce ; at one time the most en- 
\ lightened spots in the known world. 
X\ The most interesting part to me of this beautiful group of temples 
was a chamber reached from the roof, always retired and somewhat 
difficuk of access, which represents the death and resurrection of Osiris. 
This chamber is nearly over the western adytum, forming an upper 
story of the Holy Place. Here is sculptured the mourning of Osiris, 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 367, 369, 384. f Herod. 11. 40. 

J Larcher. Note on Herod. II. 41. 

§ Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 407. 

II Inquiry into the Symbolic Language of Ancient Art and JVIythology .—C/assica/ 
Journal IF Ibid. ** Ibid. 



PHILCE. 



143 



and his embalming, funereal transit, reception by the spirits of Hades, 
and final investiture as Judge of the Dead. — The next most interesting 
portion is the birth of Horus, — to which subject the western temple is 
devoted. The Christians have made sad havoc here, with their mud- 
plastering; but significant portions may be made out; and at the end, 
sufficient clearance has been effected to bring out the beautiful group 
of Isis with Horus on her knees, receiving homage on all hands, the 
guardian hawk overhead being surrounded with a glory of radiating 
water-plants. 

What a symbol is this defacement itself of that action of the infirm 
human mind which is for ever obliterating, as far as it can, all ideas 
but its own! How faithless, in fact, as well as ignorant, is that zeal 
which would extinguish as dangerous all conceptions but those which 
suit its own transient needs, and which considers as false and doomed to 
destruction all ideas, and ail expressions of them, which are not at the 
moment present to themselves ! And how great is the symbohcal en- 
couragement here in the durability of the old representations, and the 
ineffectual character of the defacement! These Christians flattered 
themselves that they had buried away for ever those old gods of Egypt, 
and driven out the whole time-honored group, to make way for their 
saints. They thought the thing was done when they had put a yellow 
halo over the lotus-glory; and the dove over the hawk; and St. Peter 
with his keys of heaven over Phthah with his key of life ; and angels 
with their palm-branches over the Assessors of the dead with their fea- 
ther-symbols of Integrity: as the Puritans of modern times supposed 
they had destroyed superstition by burning altar-pieces and stripping 
cathedrals. But such extinction, being no man's business, is in no 
man's power. The mud plaster can be cleared away; and the old gods 
reappear, serene and beautiful, and almost as venerable as ever to those 
who can discern their ideal through their forms: and it may be that 
their worship is as lively as ever in the hearts of those who regard them 
(as their best worshipers always did regard them) as imperishable 
ideas presented in forms congenial to their times. The Christian saints, 
with their halos, keys, palms, and books, share the same privilege. 
No narrow Puritan zeal can abohsh them. In as far as they embody 
spiritual truth, they must share the immortahty of truth: — exactly so 
far, and no farther. Meantime, we who have stood before the plastered 
walls of Philoe, and the ruins of Cathohc churches, cannot escape the 
admonition they convey; — to accept the truth which comes to us with- 
out daring to interfere with what comes (as they beheve) to others : to 
enjoy our brightening dawn, without trying to put out the moon and 
stars; which would not have existed, if they had not been wanted by 
some beings beyond our jurisdiction, and in some place beyond our ken. 

The order of the edifices at Philoe may be shortly given, and I hope 
clearly. 

Beginning from the southern shore, where there was once a flight of 
steps from the water, and a quay, we find first, on the left (west) hand, 
a sandstone pillar, whose fellow was brought to England by Mr. Bankes. 
This latter is remarkable as bearing inscribed the petition of the priests 



144 



EASTERN LIFE. 



of Philoe to Ptolemy Physcon, entreating him to lessen the concourse of 
people of rank and strangers, who lived on the hospitahty of the priests 
while there. The answer of the king, including an order to the govern- 
ment of the Thebaid not to permit the priests to be thus encroached 
upon, was painted on the same pedestal. From the remaining pillar a 
colonnade extends, continuous on the west side, to the great propyla. 
The thirty pillars of this western corridor are all unlike each other in 
the sprouting of their capitals, while the outline is symmetrical enough 
to avoid offence to the eye. All the vegetation represented is indige- 
nous; the different kinds of palms, water-plants, acacia, tobacco, &c., 
affording a sufficient variety. Some of the shafts bear hieroglyphic 
inscriptions, and some are plain. The intercolumnar screens, and the 
walls behind the pillars, are covered with sculptures. As I have men- 
tioned before, this colonnade is so curved as to prevent the landing- 
place and the portal of the propyla being seen from each other — a great 
blemish in modern eyes. The eastern colonnade is unfinished, and the 
part next the river is in ruins; amidst which ruins stands the little tem- 
ple of Esculapius — of course a modern affair. Its Greek dedication 
bears the name of the fifth Ptolemy. Of the sixteen pillars standing of 
the eastern colonnade, few have finished capitals, and their shafts and 
the wall behind are plain. The avenue between the two rows of 
columns is cruelly spoiled with the ruins of a mud village, among 
which lie two headless sphinxes. 

We now come to the great propylon, whose massive pyramidal tow- 
ers are the first object seen in coming up the river. These towers are 
built upon and beside the ancient gateway of the time of the Pharaohs. 
Champollion found the name of Nectanebo on this portal, and on a small 
chapel dedicated to Athor, in the avenue. These are the only ancient 
remains, the rest of the great old temple having been overthrown by the 
Persians, who were scandalized at the idea of worship being carried on 
anywhere but in the open air. The Ptolemies rebuilt the temple, pre- 
serving the Egyptian style much more carefully than in most of their 
edifices. This old gateway looks very venerable, with its antique 
winged globe on the cornice. A smaller entrance through the great pro- 
pylon — a portal on the left (west) hand of the ancient one, leads to the 
temple I mentioned as appropriated to the welcome of Horus. This 
temple is built separately, surrounded by pillars bearing the head of 
Isis for their capitals, and merely joined on to the propyla at each ex- 
tremity by a gateway. 

This temple forming the western side of the area within the great 
propylon, a row of chambers forms the eastern side. These chambers 
are small — few of them sculptured — and their wall, looking upon the 
area, rough and unfinished. The ten columns of its corridor answer 
to the seven of the opposite temple of Horus — such is the want of sym- 
metry here ! 

Passing through this area, and the gate of the inner and smaller pro- 
pylon, we enter the court of the ten celebrated colossal columns. These 
columns are in pairs as to their design, but not in their position! They 
support the roof which covers half the court, the other half of which is 



PHIL(E. 



146 



open to the sky. The ceiling is still brightly colored, as are the 
ten columns. They are completely covered with sculptures, which 
shine in a variety of blues and reds, and the pale green which is so 
beautiful everywhere. The walls here, and in all the succeeding 
chambers, are completely covered with rich painted sculptures, whose 
compartments are divided by borders which are not merely decorative, 
but emblematic also. To the uninitiated eye, these decorations are 
what we commonly call Greek borders — with no more meaning than so 
many strips of color. But to their beauty they add meanings such as 
we never think of embodying in decoration, while we have the print- 
ing-press and engraving to communicate our ideas by. Here every 
morsel of decoration is a message or admonition. While by the princi- 
ple of repetition (the value of which the Egyptians understood so well), 
the best decorative effect is produced, every element employed speaks 
its own meaning to the mind — or did to the minds of ancient visitors. 
Here we have the lotus — alternate bud and leaf stem (from which our 
common iron palisading is copied) — and there the drooping cup; here 
the ibis, and there the wild-duck and reeds; here the symbols of purity 
and stability in alternation, and there those of life and power. These 
borders run everywhere, and fill up all spaces not required for more 
special appeals to the worshiping mind. 

To this court succeeds a corridor which leads round the corner of 
the next chamber, to an entrance to some vaults. The entrance is a 
mere pit, and the gentlemen could not get far in the subterranean cham- 
bers for want of light. Beyond the corridor lie two chambers, for once, 
with doors answering to each other. Instead of one Holy Place, there 
are two; an unusual circumstance, but not a singular one. We found 
the same, and also two portals, at K6m Umboo, where the temple is 
dedicated to two deities. The western adytum here is very dark, and 
smaller than the other, and its walls are so plastered over with mud as 
hardly to leave any indications of the devices. The eastern adytum 
was in much the same condition; but some happy cleaning has laid 
open a beautiful group, of Osiris, and Isis nursing Horus, with an 
attendant behind. The faces of mother and child are fresh and pleas- 
ing. 

This account will give some idea of the arrangement of the great 
temple of Isis at Philoe. I have said nothing of several lateral cham- 
bers, and erections on the roof, which have no immediate connection 
with the general plan. I went wherever it was possible to go — on the 
roof and to the top of both propyla — so that the confusion I had felt so 
painfully before, disappeared under the study from the heights of the 
edifice. 

As for the external buildings, — there is a little temple on the western 
bank filled with the pictured feats and honors of the god Nilus, w'ho is 
there for ever at his favorite work of binding up his water plants. — 
On the eastern side, there was once a fine portal of approach which is 
now filled up nearly to the capitals of its columns, and built up between 
those capitals, and thus made into a wretched Arab hovel. As it was 
empty, and had sculptures, and the capitals were beautiful, I went in, 
10 



146 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and was presently surprised by darkness. A man, woman and boy 
had blocked up the entrance by sitting down outside on the mud heap 
which nearly occupied the space. They demanded baksheesh in a 
very different tone from that which they would have employed if our 
dragoman or the gentlemen had been in view. The woman slipped 
in, and laid hold of me, trying to wrench my gold pencil-case out of my 
hand, while the man and boy spread themselves so as still to cover the 
entrance. I knew, however, at what peril anybody in Egypt robs a 
stranger, and that I was perfectly safe. I gave these people nothing, 
and got away safe by insisting on a passage over the mud heap. As I 
emerged, the trio ran away, and I saw no more of them. 

I found my party preparing to lunch on the terrace of the temple 
called Pharaoh's Bed. This temple was built with a view to its aspect 
from the river ; and truly, the Ptolemies and Caesars have given a fine 
object to voyagers who gaze up at Philoe. We who hve in an English 
climate can hardly reconcile our unaccustomed taste to a hypaethral 
building anywhere; the only building of that kind that we have at 
home being the village Pound ; and walls without roof not answering 
to our idea of an edifice at all. But I felt here, and at night, how 
strong is the temptation to abstain from roofing public buildings, when, 
above the canopy of the clear air, there are the circling stars to light 
them. When I saw this temple roofed with Orion and Aldebaran, I 
could ask for nothing better. 

I went three times round the whole outside of the temples, so as to 
obtain some permanent impression of the immense array of gods, of- 
ferers, cartouches and legends. — I saw here, for the first time, a front 
face among the sculptures ; — a proof of their not being ancient. It was 
the middle face in more than one group of captives, whom the con- 
queror was holding by the hair, preparatory to cutting off' their heads. 

On a plain space of wall is inscribed the Latitude and Longitude of 
Philos, as ascertained by the French Commissioners whose names are 
appended. The same service is much wanted higher up the river. — 
There are inscriptions in difl^erent parts of the temple recording the 
visits of the expedition sent here by Gregory XVL, and of the French 
repubHcan army under Dessaix in 1799. 

At last, it was time to go; — absolutely necessary to go; for the boat 
was waiting which was to take us to Mahatta. We returned again 
and again to verify points on which we were not, on first comparing 
notes, fully agreed : but this lingering must come to an end. We 
could yet see Philce for some time: and how different it looked now 
when we understood every angle and every recess ! At last we rounded 
the point which intervenes between Philos and Mahatta; and we saw 
the Holy Island no more. " By Him who sleeps in Philce," I vowed 
never to part with its image from my interior picture-gallery. 

At Mahatta we found asses awaiting us, in the care of two of our 
crew who had remained with the Dahabieh. Of these, the Buck was 
one; and his glee at seeing us again was uncontrollable. He shook 
hands with us all at great length; and kept up a most vigorous panto- 
mime all the way to Aswan. He had dressed himself as splendidly as 



KOM UMBOO. 



147 



was in his power. Where his blue shirt had been cut to strips by re- 
peated floggings, he had inserted a large square white patch. He 
wore prodigious yellow slippers, and a clean white turban : and he had 
dyed his nails with henneh. 

We enjoyed our ride through the Desert to Aswan, and our re-en- 
trance there upon the comforts of our spacious dahabieh. We had 
visitors to receive, and visits to make, this evening; and on the middle 
of the next day (January 14th) we set off down the river, — with our 
heads full of Thebes. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

KOM UMBOO,— QUARRIES OF SILSILEH.— ADFOO.— EILETHYIA.— OLD 
EGYPTIAN LIFE.— ISNA.— ARMENT. 

Four days and several temples lay, however, between us and Thebes. 
I will hasten over these temples, observing only their distinguishing 
characteristics ; for I am aware that there is all the difference in the world 
between painfully putting together in the imagination the details of a 
written description of such objects, and calling up without effort that 
bright and solemn image of these marvelous old monuments which re- 
mains in the minds of those who have visited them. 

We arrived off Kom Umboo at ten at night of the day we left Aswan : 
and early in the morning we were up at the temples. 

The principal temple here was rebuilt by the Ptolemies on the site of 
an ancient one bearing the date of the Pharaohs of an early part of the 
Third Period. The only piece of this great antiquity remaining is a 
gateway dedicated to Savak, the Lord of Umboo. The larger temple 
is dedicated to him and to Aroeris, the brother of Osiris : and there are 
two entrances, each with the winged globe on its cornice ; and there 
were two adyta, side by side. They are buried and lost; but the cor- 
nices of their portals are just visible above the sand. This son of Time, 
Aroeris, is the god of Light ; and his colleague Savak is a local deity of 
the Sun, bearing rule over this southern region, but hated by the for- 
mer inhabitants of the next region to the north, who waged a savage 
war with his worshipers, on account of him; — in much the same spirit 
apparently as the Catholics of our middle ages with the Mohammedans, 
or the Puritans of our later age with the Catholics: that is, with the 
passion which seems peculiarly to belong to a faith too intense for its 
comprehensiveness. No wars are so cruel as wars for religion : and 
this warfare appears to be the only one in old Egypt in which the 
combatants are charged (whether falsely or not) with having eaten their 
enemies. The hawk and the crocodile are the symbols of Aroeris and 
Savak : and they are found in companionship in every part of the sculp- 
tures of this temple. The thick grove of columns here has a very im- 
posing effect; and the mass of overthrown blocks makes one doubt 



148 



EASTERN LIFE. 



whether any force short of an earthquake could have been the destruc- 
tive agent here. 

One curious architectural device of the Egyptians, which we found 
almost everywhere by looking for it, is here apparent at a glance, when 
one stands on the great circuit wall which incloses the whole group of 
edifices ; — their plan of regularly diminishing the size of the inner 
chambers, so as to give from the entrance, an appearance of a longer 
perspective than exists. They evidently like an ascending ground, 
the ascent of which was disguised as much as possible by the use of 
extremely shallow steps. The roof was made to descend in a greater 
degree, the descent being concealed inside by the large cornices and 
deep architraves they employed. The sides were made to draw in ; 
and thus the Holy Place was always small ; while to those who looked 
towards it from the outer chambers, (and it was entered by the priests 
alone,) it appeared not small, but distant. I had observed this in some of 
the Nubian temples, when looking at them sideways from a distance ; 
but here it was particularly evident; the roof descending in deep 
steps from the portico to the pronaos ; from the naos to the corridors ; 
and from the corridors to the adyta ; which last were level with the 
sand. 

When I was in the portico, looking up at the architraves, I saw into 
another ancient secret, which I should have been sorry to have over- 
looked. Some of the paintings were half-finished ; and their ground 
was still covered with the intersecting red hnes by which the artists se- 
cured their proportions. These guiding lines were meant to have been 
effaced as soon as the outlines were completed ; yet here they are at 
the end of, at least, two thousand years ! No hand, however light, has 
touched them, through all the intervening generations of men : — no 
rains have washed them out, during all the changing seasons that have 
passed over them : — no damp has moulded them : no curiosity has 
meddled with them. It is as if the artist had lain down for his siesta, 
with his tools beside his hand, and would be up presently to resume 
his work : yet that artist has been a mummy, lying somewhere in the 
heart of the neighboring hills, ever since the time when our island 
was bristling with forests, and its inhabitants were dressed in skins, 
and dyed their bodies blue with woad, to look terrible in battle. In 
another part of this temple, the stone is diced in small squares to re- 
ceive the hieroglyphic figures. 

The other temple was built on an artificial platform, and must have 
looked nobly from the river, as indeed its remains still do by moonlight. 
I found among the strewn fragments one capital, and only one, bearing 
the head of Athor, — the last relic perhaps of a colonnade which here 
crowned the precipitous bank. My journal records that we were much 
impressed by these ruins, — the size of the parts, and the extraordinary 
character of their wreck. The wading among blocks of sculptured 
stone, having the eye caught incessantly by some exquisite device or 
gay bit of painting, is a strange experience. So far from becoming 
tired of temple-haunting, we found the eagerness grow from day to 
day. 



SILSILEH. 



149 



In the afternoon, we plunged back into the times of the old Pharaohs, 
^into the early centuries of the Third Period. We went over the 
quarries at Silsileh, and saw excavations which might almost make us 
think that the whole human race had come here for building material, 
from the founding of Babel to the arrival of the lazy Arabs. On the 
east side I wandered long and far among lanes and areas in the rock, 
where the sides spring up like the walls of a mine, or retire in sharp cut 
gradation, to a mountainous height. All the variety I came upon in this 
silent wilderness of cut stone, was the tracks of a hyaena in the sand, 
and the marks in the rock of the tools of three or four thousand years 
ago. Some of these marks were evidently for the purpose of trying 
tools. These marks remain ; but we long in vain to know what the 
tools were like. Others seem to have been made in sport; perhaps in 
illustration of some story the workmen were telling and listening to, 
while eating their lentil pottage. On the western bank we found much 
more ; — grottoes, pillars, tablets, niches, statues, sculptures and paint- 
ings, — all of very ancient date. We have the conquering Pharaoh — 
Horus, successor of Amunoph III., overriding the Ethiopians, receiving 
the captives, whose arms are tied in all manner of ways, — some with 
the elbows above their heads ; — and holding groups of the foe by the 
hair, threatening to cut off their heads. We see him borne in a shrine 
on men's shoulders, with files of soldiers in attendance, and the lion 
pacing along beside the royal chariot. In another place we have the 
most solemn representation those old artists knew how to offer ; — the 
king receiving the symbol of Life from the Supreme god. 

The historian revels among such memorials as these. The invari- 
able practice here of sculpturing the names and titles of the kings, and 
often of their chief officers ; and the descriptions of the people con- 
quered ; and the names of offerers as well as gods, make research here 
a self-rewarding effort, very unlike the painful and uncertain specula- 
tion which is all that can be attempted among the antiquities of more 
modern countries. To the historian, such places as these are a glo- 
rious field : but they are not less interesting to the moralist or the poet. 
What a proof it is of the sanctity of the work of temple-building that the 
very quarries were consecrated to the gods ! Truly, they were a religious 
people, these old Egyptians : — receiving their children as from the gods ; 
bringing their children to the temples in bands to make offerings ; in- 
voking the Judge of the dead at their banquets ; presenting their con- 
quests as sacrifice to the heavenly powers ; and consecrating their work 
of temple-building by first making the very rocks holy which were to 
furnish the material. There is a great congregation of gods here, re- 
ceiving offerings from several Pharaohs. Savak is the local deity: 
and the god Nilus holds a higher rank than usual: some think because 
the river here narrows between the rocks, and runs with a strong cur- 
rent: and others because much of the stone cut here for distant works, 
was committed to the charge of Nilus for transport. The tablets bear 
some inscriptions of great historical value; and particularly a record of 
Assemblies held in various years of the reign of the Great Ramases. 
What these Assemblies were, in their object and details, perhaps some 



150 



EASTERN LIFE. 



future decipherer of Egyptian records will tell us. At present we 
know only that they were held in the great hails of the temples, and 
were considered of the utmost importance ; so that the title of President 
of the Assemblies was one of the highest dignity, offered to the king 
alone on earth, and supposed to be enjoyed by the gods in their own 
regions.* 

We set off after breakfast, on the morning of the 16th, to see the 
great Adfoo temple, walking about a mile through millet patches, stub- 
ble and dust. From our deck we had seen what looked like clouds of 
smoke rising from the town, and partly obscuring the great propyla. 
When we reached the edifice this appearance was explained in a way 
which pleased us very much. The people were carrying off the dust 
from the area of the temple, to qualify the rich mud of the shore ; and 
donkeys were passing in and out under the entrance gate. Men were 
loading their asses within the area ; and we found the place wonder- 
fully improved since our former visit. We could still handle the capi- 
tals of the tallest columns by walking on the sand between them; but 
the western colonnade and area wall were cleared almost to their bases. 
The external sculptures of the propylon indicate, however, that much 
remains to be done ; for the captive groups, whose heads the victor is 
threatening, hardly show their noses above ground. The process 
which was going forward of course covered us with dust ; but we re- 
joiced in it, for the sake of the good done ; if only the Arabs do not 
fill the court with something worse than even this dust — with such 
mud hovels as are stuck all over the roofs, and ruin the outhne of this 
magnificent temple. The dust was of the less consequence to some of 
us that we were destined to be at all events half-choked. The temple 
chambers can be reached only by going down a hole like the entrance 
to a coal-cellar, and crawling about like crocodiles, on the sand within, 
there being barely room, in some places, to squeeze one's prostrate- 
body between the dust and the roof, with a huge capital of a pillar on 
either hand. The having to carry lights, under penalty of one's own 
extinction in the noisome air and darkness if they go out, much com- 
plicates the difficulty ; so that a proper visit to the interior of the Adfoo 
temple is really something of an adventure. I could not, under the 
circumstances, trace out the disposition of the building; but five gen- 
tlemen, the dragoman and I, penetrated a considerable way — as far, 
indeed, as it was possible to go ; traversing, it seemed to me, three 
chambers, and ending in one which, from its oblong form, 1 should have 
supposed to be a corridor ; but which, having apparently but one door, 
must, in that case, have been the adytum. The sculptures were clear 
and clean ; but the place was too stifling, with half-a-dozen people and 
tallow candles in it, and no fresh air for many years, to admit of more 
than a rapid survey. The sculptures exhibited offerings to the gods; 
the offerers being Ptolemies. The temples at Adfoo were both erected 
by successive monarchs of that race; and the interest of this magnifi- 
cent edifice is, therefore, rather owing to its being, from its durability, 



Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, V. 288. 



ADFOO EILETHYIA. 



151 



a model to us of the plan and structure of an Egyptian temple, and to 
the richness of its architecture and sculpture, than to any charm of an- 
tiquity. 

Its extent and massive character are best perceived from the top of 
the propylon. For the beauty of the view beyond, too, every traveler 
should go there. The mass of temple buildings below is a fine centre 
for such a landscape. About this centre is gathered the poor town, 
whose fields spread to the river. Almost the whole wide circuit with- 
in the blue mountains, or yellow limestone hills on the horizon, is one 
bright green level. The only interruptions are from the winding river, 
and some pools among the western fields ; pools at present, but canal 
at the time of the subsidence of the Nile. 

As the morning was shady and cool, we returned on foot to the boat, 
where we shook off our dust, and wrote our journals, in preparation 
for new enterprises. The winds were now less cold and strong than 
within the tropics ; but we had frequent cloudy skies — as to-day, for a 
short time. Towards evening, the sky cleared to the west; and the 
shore at El Kab, where we were mooring, was gorgeously lighted up 
by a parting gleam. A strange-looking wall tempted us ashore ; and 
we found that this circuit-wall of the vanished city of Eilethyia, whose 
tombs we were to see lo-morrow, was in fact a substantial fortification, 
containing a hollow-way between two stout masses of crude brick. 
This wall enclosed an area large enough for an extensive city ; and a 
level stretches behind, from the wall to the mountains, which might, in 
the days of the prosperous old tillage, when Egypt was the granary of 
the world, easily support the population of the district. 

The morning of the ITth.was charming ; most favorable for our ride 
to the tombs in the Desert. Our asses were of the smallest ; so small 
that the gentlemen could help them on by using a walking-stick as 
they rode. I never before saw such a variety in the size and strength 
of animals of the same race, in near neighborhood. To-day it was 
like riding a dog — and in two days more, at Thebes, we were mounted 
on donkeys almost as large and strong as mules. 

The arid plain that we rode over had drifts of stones which seemed 
to show that vehement torrents sometimes sweep down here from the 
hills. The recesses of the Desert are very striking — so utterly still 
and dreary, with nothing but the blue shadows coming and going, from 
century to century. Here and there we passed to-day shallow pools of 
salt water ; and there were crusts of natron on the soil. 

We visited a very small and very ancient temple, about three miles 
from the river; and two less antique, nearer the old town. But temples 
must be imposing indeed to obtain much attention here, where we come 
upon some old tombs for the first time. In the temples we have the 
worship and the wars of the old Egyptians. In some of the tombs, we 
have their thoughts of death, judgment and retribution: but in many 
we have their daily life, their occupations, their festivals and their 
mirth ; and these are interesting beyond description. 

The tombs at Eilethyia are grottoes in the rock ; vaulted, and with 
ceilings elaborately painted. Some have a pit before the entrance ; 



152 



EASTERN LIFE. 



some have pits within ; and others communicate with holes or low-roofed 
caverns where the dead might be deposited. The date is known by the 
names of several kings being inscribed in the most easterb/ tomb ; those 
kings being of the beginning of the Third Period, immediately after the 
expulsion of the Shepherds. 

The moment of entering these tombs is that of a sudden withdraw- 
ing of the clouds which overhang those far distant ages. Hitherto, 
we have learned something of their devotional conceptions and feelings; 
something of their philosophy ; and much of their arts of war and of 
building; but thus far we have learned nothing of the every-day life of 
common people, except that the offerings in the temples prove what 
they had to eat, drink, wear and use. Now, however, on entering 
these and other tombs, the dimness that overhangs the Nile valley clears 
away, and we see the people at work in the fields, and busy on the 
river, and merry in their houses. It is no dream, — no transient vision, 
—with clouds driving up to hide it from us again. It is steady before 
our eyes, and we can take our time in studying it. We can note every 
article of dress ; every instrument of music ; and the very dishes pre- 
paring for dinner. How wonderful it is ! And what a fortunate thing 
for us that it was the custom in Egypt for the owner of a tomb to paint 
it all over with pictures of his life, its possessions, its interests and its 
deeds ! — Now let us see what this family are doing; — master, mistress, 
children and servants. 

This is a rich man. With us, he would be a very rich man : and 
his possessions are such as would make him weahhy in any part of the 
world. The first we see of him is in the field where his laborers are 
ploughing and sowing: that is, his chariot is in the field: so he is no 
doubt overlooking his people. The inundation has of course subsided : 
and it appears that his land does not lie very low. If it did, he would 
hardly be setting his people to plough, but merely to sprinkle the seed 
on the slime ; — to cast his bread upon the waters, that he might find it 
again, after many days. This plough, however, is a very simple affair ; 
and not wanted to go ver}'' deep. A mere scratching of the surface is 
enough, in such a soil as this. If any stiff clods turn up, they are 
broken with the hoe: but that does not seem to be the case here; for 
the sower follows the ploughman pretty closely. Herodotus thought 
the Egyptians very enviable in his day for the ease with Avhich their 
husbandry was managed. There were no people in the world, he says, 
who obtained their corn with less labor and pains. " They are not 
obliged to make toilsome furrows with the plough, to break the clods, 
and to give to their fields the cares which the rest of men bestow ; but 
when the river has of its own accord watered their lands, and the waters 
have retired, then every one lets in his hogs, and afterwards sows his 
field. When the sowing is done, the oxen are driven upon the ground ; 
and after these animals have buried the grain by trampling it in, there 
is only to await quietly the time of harvest."* There is nothing said 
here of the subsequent irrigation which is quite as toilsome a process 



Herod. II. 14. 



EILETHYIA. 



153 



as any ploughing in Greece could ever have been. What a waste of 
seed this sower is making, — unless that cataract of seed is a flourish of 
the artists ! He seems to throw more from his hand than any hand can 
hold, — or even the basket from which he takes his supply. If it has 
been " a good Nile" this year, here will be corn for export, after every 
one is well fed at home. — Ah ! we shall soon see that : for here, in the 
second line of paintings, we are carried on to the harvest. The crops 
seem certainly very vigorous. This tallest growth is millet, of course : 
the next, barley ; the shortest, wheat. They cut the wheat-ears off 
short with a sickle very like ours : but they pull up the millet by the 
roots. There is a woman uprooting it now. Probably they use the 
stalks for fencing, thatching, or bedding the cattle, as the country people 
do at this day. What is that man doing with the roots of the plucked 
millet ? Is he knocking off the earth from them ? That is a neat sheaf 
that his comrade is tying; and the man who is carrying another seems 
to find it large and heavy, as indeed it looks. That instrument, w^ith 
teeth like a comb, seems to work cleverly in stripping off the grain from 
the stalk. — It is only the millet that is so treated ; for here, in the third 
line, is the threshing-floor, with the oxen treading out the wheat. The 
driver is singing ; and here is actually his song, written up beside his 
picture : — * 

" Thresh for yonrseh^es, oxen ! Thresh for yourselves. 
Thresh for yourselves, O oxen! Thresh for yourselves. 
Measures for yourselves ! Measures for your masters. 
Measures for yourselves ! Measures for your masters."' 

This is the song this driver was singing while Moses was a child. — 
The wheat is swept up, and delivered to the winnowers ; who are 
making showers in the air with the falling wheat. And here it is 
carried to the place where the scribe is ready to see it measured and 
deposited in the granary. 

These scribes look like very stiff writers. How formally they hold 
the tablet, supporting the left arm on the bent knee! and how hard they 
seem to be bearing on the style, as if it were steel, and they were en- 
graving! But this is only a bit of energy put in by the artist ; for the 
style was only a reed pen ; and it made its marks with colored inks. — 
But here are several scribes, taking account of many things besides the 
grain which is brought home. These bags that they are causing to be 
weighed before them, are money bags. This must be a very rich man. 
Here are gold rings too; — the ancient form of currency. — And here is 
the live stock: cattle, asses, pigs, goats: what an array! — And the 
gentleman was a sportsman too, I suppose; or, at least, chose to have 
his table well supplied; for here are game, and geese, and fish. Pro- 
bably, the Nile left him plenty of fish within his embankments, when 
the waters retired: or he might keep fish-ponds stocked; as it appears 
some people did. The old Egyptians must have been very fond of 
fowling, judging by the number and variety of nets, and the multitude 
of fluttering birds which we see among the domestic pictures. — Ah ! 



* Champollion. Lettres sur TEgypte, 11th and 12th letters. 



154 



EASTERN LIFE. 



these people have taken more fish and geese than they want at present; 
and here we see them saking them. From what we saw ourselves just 
now, there must have been a good deal of salt produced in the neigh- 
borhood : and if not enough for everybody, more was brought down 
the river by the traders from Ethiopia, where we know salt was brought 
from the east for sale. 

Here is a wine-press : — no wonder ! for we are coming presently to 
the picture of a banquet. We know that the kings and the priests 
w^ere much restricted in the use of wine : but the sculptures and paint- 
ings show that there was much wine-bibbing among gentlemen and 
ladies generally. Every landed proprietor seems to have had his wine- 
press ; as far as this kind of evidence goes: and the sick and tipsy 
guests at banquets are really a scandal to those old times. By the way, 
those who had wine-presses must have had lands extending backwards to 
the skirts of the hills; for vines will not grow in the rich Nile mud nor 
bear being laid under water for months at a time. The great valley must 
have been skirted with vineyards in those old times. Besides all that they 
grew, we know that they imported wine largely, as soon as they could 
get it. One w^ay and another, — as medicine, or with their food, or at 
their banquets, they certainly disposed of a great deal. And here are 
a group of servants, treading the grapes very energetically. 

What a splendid affair this boat is, with its band of rowers, and its 
pavilion, with door and two windows ; — quite a house ! — and the gay 
sail, all checkered with bright colors I How well these people wove 
and dyed iu those days ! This sail is bulging, as if in a strong wind, 
which imphes that it is stout as well as gay. What is this wheel, on 
the roof of the pavilion, and under the corner of the sail? For a long 
time I believed that this was part of the tackle ; and I made a drawing 
of it for future inquiry. From Sir G. Wilkinson I learn"^ that I did 
not use my eyes well, or I might have seen that this is the wheel of a 
chariot, which is placed there for conveyance. I might have disco- 
vered this by the horses, whose heads appear in my sketch, in front of 
the pavihon. This other boat, rowing the contrary way, makes all 
clear. Here the sail and mast are down ; and the chariot on the roof 
is unmistakeable ; besides that the horses stand on the deck. The 
rudder is in shape an enormous paddle, swung on a pivot by a little man 
standing at the stern. How eager the pilot looks, making gestures 
from his place at the bow ! These capacious and handsome boats, — 
vessels of a higher order than such as are represented among the chat- 
tels of ordinary landed proprietors, — make me hope that this is indeed 
the tomb of the old Egyptian admiral, which Champollion studied so 
successfully at Eliethyia. His tablet tells that he was "Chef des nau- 
tonniers" in the reign of Thothmes I. ; that he served in the earlier 
time of Amosis, and did battle to great purpose while he commanded 
on the water: and also that he was himself named Amosis. t If this 
be indeed Amosis, he returned from his exploits on the water to a life 
of great plenty and some merriment on the shore. 



Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, III. 197. 



■j" Lettres sur TEgypte. 



ISNA. 



155 



Some merriment : for here is a grand banquet. The provision is va- 
rious : quarters of beef, cakes, fruits, wine flasks, &c. And in the re- 
ception room, how decorous is everything! — at least, before dinner! 
Here are the host and hostess, in a handsome chair, looking towards 
their guests, who are ranged in front, the gentlemen in one file ; the 
ladies in another. Every lady is smelling at a large water-lily with 
all her might. To the host's chair a monkey is tied. Perhaps Amosis 
brought it home after one of his voyages up to the south. There is a row 
of musicians, playing on the harp and the double-pipe, and some clap- 
ping ; by way of a little amusement before dinner. 

But to all things there comes an end. We see her€ the day (how 
far back in the depths of time !) when these merry feasts were all over, 
— the lilies dead, — the music hushed, — the last of this man's harvests 
stored, — the last trip enjoyed by boat or chariot. The fish need no 
more fear him in their pools, nor the fowl among the reeds. Here he 
is lying under the hands of the embalmers ; and next we see him in 
mummy form on the bier, in the consecrated boat which was to carry 
him over the dark river, and land him at the gates of the heavenly 
abode where the Spirits of the dead, and the Judge Osiris were await- 
ing him, to try his deeds, and pronounce his sentence for eternal good 
or ill. Here are the fife and death of a man who hved so long ago 
that at the first mention of him, we think of him as one having no 
kindred with us. But how like ours were his life and death ! Com- 
pare him with a retired naval officer made country gentleman in our 
day, and in how much less do they differ than agree! 

I was sorry to see carved, — actually cut, — among the sculptures of 
the easternmost tomb at Eilethyia, among the intrusions of many who 
knew no better, such names as these of Irby and Mangles, Belzoni, 
and Madden. If visitors must leave their names, why not do it on the 
rough rock by the entrance ? Can there ever come a day, however far 
off, when it will not be a sin for strangers to carve their names all over 
the statuary in Westminster Abbey? 

In the afternoon, between Eilethyia and Isna, we passed five boats 
with European flags ; — one of which was Russian, and the rest English. 
The Russian countess was an English woman, moreover. I could not 
but hope that these travelers would not pronounce decisively on the 
scenery of Egypt, as observed from their boats ; for they were too late 
in the season to see much without the effort of going often ashore. 
The river had sunk so much that we hardly recognized some districts, 
whose aspect appeared totally altered from what it was a few weeks 
before. We had missed the birds, while we were up in Nubia. We 
never saw again such myriads as filled the depths of the heavens when 
we set out on our voyage : but now we began to note large flights of 
them, increasing daily as we drew near the plain of Thebes. 

I think I had better say little of Isna, whose temple is so universally . 
praised that every one knows ail about it. Those have heard of it who are 
ignorant of almost everything else about Egypt. If it were ancient, 
I could not refrain from giving my impressions of it: but the only relic 
of the old edifice supposed to exist is a small red door jamb, bearing 



156 



EASTERN LIFE. 



date in the time of Thothmes I., mentioned by Champollion. The 
portico bears the names of the Caesars : and, however greatly the world 
is obliged to them for erecting a very majestic and elegant temple, we 
are not aided by it in our researches into the affairs of the old Egyp- 
tians. The Pasha, as is known, cleared out the portico to the very 
bases of the columns ; and a noble hall it now is. The amount of ac- 
cumulation is shown by the height of the dust-hill we had to descend, 
from the alley in front of the temple. Our Rais shut out the children 
who came swarming after us, as usual ; so that, for once, we explored 
a temple at our ease, in coolness and freedom, and without being asked 
for baksheesh. 

If I were to enlarge on anything in regard to this temple, it would 
be the amount of inscriptions. But it is indescribable, — unremember- 
able, — incredible anywhere but on the spot. I have already said all 
that language can say on this point: and I will leave it. 

There is a Zodiac here, as every one knows: not ancient. No Zo- 
diac in Egypt is ancient; but one or two offer Egyptian symbols v»?-hich 
it is interesting to notice: — the Scarabaeus for the Crab: the double- 
headed Sphinx for the Twins : a truly Egyptian compound of an ani- 
mal for the Seagoat: and a Man with the oriental water-skin, — the 
Goat or Kid-skin — on his shoulder, for Aquarius. 

I saw here first the Serpents, human-headed and human-legged, of 
which we soon met so much more primitive and satisfactory a represen- 
tation at Thebes. These Serpents and many other nondescripts abound 
in this temple; so that it looks like an illustration of much of the book 
of Revelations. — Here, for the first time, I saw the glorious Egyptian 
symbol of the Heavens ; — the Long Arms of the goddess Pe encirchng 
a whole compartment of the vast ceiling. 

This 18th of January was remarkable for bringing us again among 
the dwellings and resorts of a town population, after our retirement 
and dreamings in the still southern regions. We visited the Pasha's 
palace, (bringing away some splendid jessamine from his garden,) 
and his cotton factory ; and his chained prisoners in the guard-house. 
All wore chains, which glittered in the sun, — for they were new and 
bright : and of these, seven had a collar round their necks, and their 
hands confined in a sort of stocks, — much more clumsy than any hand- 
cuffs. These seven were doomed to death; — desperadoes who would 
be hanged or shot if the Pasha did not reverse their sentence — of which 
there seemed to be no expectation. They were as lively as the busy 
passengers in the streets, and cried "baksheesh" as vigorously as any 
idler in the place. The other prisoners were, we were told, thieves and 
deserters. 

Our stay at Isna for so many hours was for the sake of the crew; 
that they might bake their bread. This was done before evening; and 
we proceeded, in order to reach the temple at Arment (the Greek Her- 
monthis) by the morning. It was a glorious evening; and, after watch- 
ing the young moon going down just after the sun, there were still 
some things to be seen on the western bank. Whatever was on the 
ridge showed black against the orange sky ; — a pacing camel ; a string 



THE NILE ARMENT. 



157 



of asses ; some children at play, and two or three men at prayers. As 
they faced the east, every gesture of prostration was seen, and every 
flow of their majestic garments. — In my childhood, I used to wonder 
why Pharaoh's kine came up out of the water: but now, and often be- 
sides, I saw how truly Egyptian this dream was. The cattle often cross 
the Nile by swimming, — sometimes resting on a shoal in the middle of 
the river. This evening, a noble buffalo kept us in a state of interest 
for half an hour by his incessant efforts to land, and the difficulty he 
had in doing so. Again and again, he put off, swimming slowly about 
with only his head above water; and then he would struggle in the 
tenacious mud, and seem to have obtained a footing ; and shp back again, 
and disappear in the shadow of the bank. Then he would come out 
again into the hght; the failing light, which was almost gone before he 
was safe. We saw the last shine of it on his sides as he paced slowly 
up to the ridge, evidently trembling and exhausted. AH things in 
Egypt seem to cross their great highway with as little concern as we do 
ours. As we walk across a road, they pass through the Nile. Whole 
droves of cattle, and sometimes asses and sheep; and children, when- 
ever the fancy takes them ; and men, with a bundle of millet-stalks 
under them, or with a log to lean their breasts against; their clothes, 
or their burden of produce, on their heads. We never witnessed any 
sign of fear of crocodiles, or heard of any disasters by them, as far as I 
remember. 

At five in the morning, we were at the nearest point to the Arment 
temple ; and I walked the mile and half which lay between the shore 
and it with great pleasure, having grass to tread on for the first time 
for several weeks. There was an air of civilization about the village 
which was rather unusual, — the fences being neatly built of millet- 
stalks, tall and thick, and the place supplied with water from a well- 
kept pond, fed by a channel from the river. Immediately beyond the 
village, we entered the Desert, which was all undulating with mounds 
of broken pottery and other rubbish. The quantity of broken pottery 
about these places remained a mystery to us to the last. In a hollow 
among these mounds he the ruins of the Christian Church, which was 
itself built, it is thought, from the materials afforded by the larger tem- 
ple of Hermonthis. These ruins consist of some portions of wall, very 
massive from the size of the blocks ; much strewn stone, and a con- 
siderable number of prostrate columns, of red granite. A little further 
on stand the remaining pillars of Cleopatra's temple ; eight altogether, 
in the area and portico. The remains are miserably obstructed and 
deformed by the mud partition and huts which have taken shelter 
under the sculptured walls and painted roofs of the temple : but one is 
less concerned about it here than in almost any other case ; for the 
edifice is, as I said, of no older time than Cleopatra's. The witch- 
queen still interests us enough to make us run after every memorial of 
her. The many who know her only through Shakspeare hunt for her 
portrait-figure at Philoe before they look for Osiris and Isis : and they 
come here to see the hundred representations of her, sitting with the 
little Caesarion on her knees, — (in honor of whose birth this temple was 



158 



EASTERN LIFE. 



built,) — or presenting the child to the gods. Nothing can be more dis- 
tinct than the features of the queen, when seen in the full light, on the 
outer walls ; and they are no doubt to be taken as a portrait, as the 
edifice was her own work. The face is very charming ; the features 
small, and not at all after the Greek type ; and the expression girlish 
and simple, — like that of the ancient Isis and Athor. We obtain here 
an impression something like that which we derive from the pictures 
of Mary Queen of Scots : a conviction of the general resemblance, with 
no recognition of such extraordinary beauty as we read of, but a sense 
that the charm might be all that we are told when the soul was at work 
among those features. 

We see how the httle Csesarion is committed to the guardianship, 
even to the nursing of the god of Hermonthis — the Amun Ra of Thebes 
here presented under the form of the bull Bash, or Basis — which has 
characteristics distinguishing it at once to the eye from the bull Apis. 
In one place we see the bull suckling — that is sustaining — the child; 
and over the principal gate there is a sculpture of the bull bearing 
Cassarion between his horns, while a decorative margin is formed by 
four copies in small of the same group of Cleopatra with the child on 
her knees. There is a profusion of ornament throughout the building, 
but it is of a low style of art — about, however, to give place to a lower 
— for this is, of course, the last work of the Ptolemies, who now gave 
place to the Romans. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THEBES.— EUROPEAN TRAVELERS AND NATIVE ARABS.— THE PAIR. 
—THE RAMASEUM.— EL-KURNEH. 

At last we were at Thebes — in the afternoon of this Tuesday, the 
19th of January. We were very happy, for there was no hurry. On 
either hand lay the plain of Thebes, and before us there was leisure to 
explore it. We stayed eight days — giving five to the western bank and 
three to the eastern. We made, w^e thought, good use of our time, ex- 
ploring daily as much as we could without plunging ourselves into too 
much fatigue and excitement. What the excitement is can be known 
only to those who have spent successive days in penetrating the recesses 
of the palaces, and burying themselves in the tombs of the Pharaohs, 
who lived among the hundred gates of this metropolis of the world be- 
fore the Hebrew infant was laid among the nests of the Nile water-fowl. 
Perhaps some hint of what the interest of Thebes is, may be derived 
from such poor account as I am able to give of what we saw there; but 
I shall tell only what we saw, and nothing of what we felt. That can 
be spoken of nowhere but on the spot. 

This first evening we attempted nothing beyond a little stroll on the 
shore at sunset. The first thing we saw was a throng of boats — five 
English flags and one Russian. Some were just departing, and others 



THEBES. 



159 



went the next day. Thebes is the last place in the world where one 
wishes for society; so I dare say every party of the whole throng was 
longing to see all the rest sail away. In the end we enjoyed as much, 
quietness as we could expect, and suffered no real interruption in our 
expeditions. After the exchange of sundry greetings with our neigh- 
bors, the gentlemen and I walked up to the ruins of the El-Uksur 
temple, and in and out, and round about, till we arrived at some under- 
standing of their arrangement and object. We now found how much 
we had gained by practice in looking at temples. This was hardly 
hke the same group of ruins we had visited a few weeks before. By 
the training of the eye in the intermediate time, we saw new beauty in 
the proportions — and especially of the obelisk — new spirit in the sculp- 
tures, and a higher and fresher glory in the colonnades. We were not 
less but more impressed by the magnitude of the scale of the architec- 
ture, and far more impressible by all its other features. 

When the moon came up, it was time to be returning to our boat, but 
as we were turning the corner of the ruins, a man accosted us, with an 
air of invitation, courteously pointing out a long flight of steps, and say- 
ing apparently (but we had no interpreter with us) something about a 
castle. Mr. E. told me this was, no doubt, the guard-house, and we 
agreed to go and see it. Instead of governor, garrison, or chained pri- 
soners, however, we found an elderly gentleman on his deewan, enjoy- 
ing his chibouque. He addressed us in French, ordered coffee and 
pipes, offered now some information about the ruins, and next his guid- 
ance among them during our stay at Thebes. When he permitted us 
to depart, at the end of half an hour, Mr. E. said to me, "Well, now, 
who is this that we have been seeing?" "Nay," said I, "that is what 
I thought you were going to tell me." He was certainly no official 
personage, and certainly he was a European. He proved to be the 
Signer Castellare whom we had heard of as having settled himself at 
Thebes, to discover antiquities, and explain them to those who have 
faith in his interpretation, and to sell specimens to such as have 
money enough to pay his very high prices for them. It is only by 
connivance that he does these things, for the Pasha's pleasure is that 
none of the antiquities shall leave the country. And the connivance is 
not likely to last long, for the people of the place naturally dishke that 
a stranger should take out of their hands the traffic with visitors, which 
they find much more profitable than their inevitable sales to the Signer. 
Whenever the Signor does anything to prove to the world his sound 
knowledge on the subject of Egyptian antiquities, every one will be 
glad of his offered guidance, and of his help, at any price, in securing 
specimens. In the meantime, perhaps the works of Champolh'on, Ro- 
selhni and Wilkinson, compared with the old classical writings which 
relate to Egypt, will be found to give guidance enough, while there is 
seldom any scarcity of illustrative curiosities on the spot. 

At midnight, three more boats arrived ; and their owners roused the 
echoes of the whole region, by firing guns, in honor of the English 
boats on the river. We found the English here generally quite as well 
pleased with the behavior of the Arabs as we were. They found their 



160 



EASTERN LIFE. 



crews, and also the country people, friendly and helpful — even affec- 
tionate, in all their intercourses. The crews were always willing and 
cheerful about their work, and honest in their transactions with the 
strangers. The drawbacks were the incessant begging of the country 
people; and the noise and childish quarreling of the crews among 
themselves. These were troublesome incidents ; but not to be com- 
plained of by us strangers as injuries. Among the many who were 
pleased, however, there was one who was always making grievous 
complaints. Never man was, by his own account, in such incessant 
and pressing danger of robbery, piracy, and murder, as this gehtleman 
on the Nile. Never did any man so suffer from the perils in which 
he hourly saw his wife and children. Every Arab he met wanted to 
rob him : every group on the bank, and every party in a boat, was 
congregated to board and pillage his dahabieh, and murder his family. 
He showed us a loaded six-barreled pistol which he usually carried in 
his hand, as he declared to us, wherever he went ; and which he was, 
he assured us, obliged very frequently to discharge. It did not seem 
to strike him as strange that all the other English, who went unarmed, 
and feared nothing, were content with the Arabs — lost nothing, and 
met with no alarms. He remained fully convinced of his danger : and 
this is the reason why I mention his case here. It is the least that 
European travelers can do in acknowledgment of the security and 
facilities which the Pasha's government affords them on the Nile, to 
testify to that security and those facilities ; and the testimony is not 
less due to the kindly Arabs, on whom so much of their comfort has 
depended : and if one traveler talks of his dangers and wrongs as this 
gentleman does, it is necessary to justice that the majority should de- 
clare their contrary experience. The worst of it is that one man who 
has desperate adventures to tell of, will make more impression than a 
dozen whose testimony is that they had no adventures. But this 
makes it all the more necessary that they should say what they found 
the state of things. As for myself, I walked much on shore, and was 
frequently wandering away by myself among the ruins or in the fields : 
and I had no reason to consider myself imprudent — except indeed 
about the dogs. I was incessantly forgetting that Egyptian dogs are 
dangerous — being trained to attack strangers. But as soon as the bark- 
ing began, I found the owners quick and eager in restraining the ani- 
mals : and usually there were some one of the crew within hearing, 
armed with a club. I do not remember that I ever met with any rude 
pressure or threatening but twice, while in Egypt: and then I had put 
myself in the power of poor creatures who could not resist the tempta- 
tion of grasping at the chance of a large baksheesh. One time was at 
Philoe, as I have related. The other was this evening in a hut at the 
El-Uksur temple, where some women closed the door behind me, and 
proved themselves to be very sturdy beggars, till disturbed by one of 
my party coming lo look for me. Two instances of bold begging, 
in ten weeks of constant opportunities, is not much. 

As I took a brisk walk along the shore, to warm myself, the next 
morning, " the Lybian suburb" was dressed in the most wonderful 



THEBES. 



161 



coloring by the early sun. It was in that direction that our researches 
were to lie for some days ; and as soon as our boat was clear of visitors 
after breakfast, we crossed the river, and took up our station olf the 
western bank. Alee was particular in his choice of animals for us to 
ride, that we might be suited at once for the whole time of our stay on 
the western side. Mrs. Y. had a horse — quieter than my donkey. I 
was favored with a strong, spirited donkey, whose curator was an 
active, open-faced, obliging youth, who discovered my wishes and aims 
with wonderful quickness, and indulged them to the utmost of his 
power. He presently found out my liking for visiting the Pair : and 
also for a canter over the plain : and almost every evening, he would 
point to the Colossi, and nod and smile, and begin a run in that direc- 
tion, while the rest of the party went straight to the boat. And he ran 
so well that we generally fell in with my companions before they had 
dismounted, though I had made a pretty wide circuit. I can never 
lose the impression of these sunset rides homewards, after the excite- 
ments and toils of the day. The Pair, sitting alone amidst the expanse 
of verdure, with islands of ruins behind them, grew more striking to us 
every day. To-day, for the first time, we looked up at them from their 
base. The impression of sublime tranquillity which they convey when 
seen from distant points, is confirmed by a near approach. There they 
sit, keeping watch — hands on knees, gazing straight forward, seeming, 
though so much of the faces is gone, to be looking over to the monu- 
mental piles on the other side of the river, which became gorgeous 
temples after these throne seats were placed here ; — the most immov- 
able thrones that have ever been established on this earth. He who 
is popularly called the Memnon, is sadly shattered. This is the work 
that Cambyses tried his hand upon overthrowing. With all his efforts, 
he shattered it only down to the waist. It is built up again ; patched 
up ; — a blank rough space only remaining where we would fain see a 
face. If the faces were of the tranquil, innocent character which marks 
the old sculptures, and would eminently suit the composure of the atti- 
tude, the impression must have been majestic indeed : inviolable to any 
one but Cambyses. Strabo says that, as he was told, the damage was 
done by an earthquake. One would like to think that Nature, rather 
than Man, had done it ; and perhaps the inscriptions of ancient visitors, 
who lay the blame on Cambyses, need not have much weight. But 
how came the earthquake to leave the mass of the throne and body un- 
hurt, while shattering the shoulders and head ? I suppose nobody 
thinks that the whole was thrown over, and set up again, the fellow 
colossus remaining uninjured. The inscriptions are wonderfully nu- 
merous ; most in Latin ; some in Greek. On the pedestal — the side 
of the throne-chair — is old Nilus, once more busy, as in all times, in 
binding up the throne of the King with his water-plants. The King 
is Amunoph III. His name is over the tablet bound up by Nilus; and 
also on the back of the statue. 

These statues sit now, as I have said, in the midst of an expanse of 
verdure, at the season when travelers visit them. At high Nile, they 
are islands in the midst of a waste of waters. But of old, their pedes- 
11 



162 



EASTERN LIFE. 



tals rose from the pavement of the Dromos or course which formed the 
avenue to the palace-temple of Amunoph, eleven hundred feet behind 
the colossi. This palace-temple, once superb with its statues, co- 
lumns, and sphinxes, is now a mere heap of sandstone ; — a little 
roughness in the plain, when seen from the heights behind. The 
sphinxes are at St. Petersburgh; the columns are broken olf from their 
bases; the statues peep out in fragments from under the soil. In the 
days of the glory of Thebes, the Nile did not come here ; but the whole 
avenue, with all its erections, stood on raised ground — a magnificent 
sight from the river. The Nile itself has risen since those days ; and 
in proportion to the raising of its bed has been its spread over the plain ; 
so that the pavement of the dromos, and the pedestals of the colossi, 
have been buried deeper and deeper in mud; and must continue to be 
so. Sand may be dealt with hereafter, for the rescue of the treasures 
of Egyptian art ; but it does not appear that the mud of the Nile can. 
How strange it is to look forward to the gradual stifling of these giants 
—sitting patiently there for more thousands of years, to be buried, inch 
by inch, out of human sight ! They now stand about fifty-three feet 
above the soil ; and seven feet below it. But the mention of the total 
height gives less idea of their magnitude than the measurement of the 
limbs. From the elbow to the fingers' ends, they measure seventeen 
feet nine inches ; and from the knee to the plant of the foot, nineteen 
feet eight inches. 

To-day we saw, for the first time, an old Egyptian palace ; that of 
Ramases the Great, so many of whose monuments we had visited 
higher up the river. This palace of the Ramaseum (commonly and 
erroneously called the Memnonium) is also a temple. The old Pha- 
raohs brought their gods into their palaces, and also had apartments in 
the temple ; so that the great buildings of this metropoHs were appro- 
priated to gods and kings jointly. It is melancholy to sit on the piled 
stones amidst the wreck of this wonderful edifice, where violence incon- 
ceivable to us has been used to destroy what art inconceivable to us 
had erected. What a rebuke to the vanity of succeeding ages is here ! 
What have we been about, to imagine men in those early times childish 
or barbarous, — to suppose science and civilization reserved for us of 
these later ages, when here are works, in whose presence it is a task 
for the imagination to overtake the eyesight! 

I went first to the propylon ; and it seemed to me, as I clambered 
about its ruins, that the stones of this outwork alone would build a ca- 
thedral. I found an inclined plane and staircase within the propylon, 
and climbed till I could make my way no further, seeing glimpses 
between the fallen blocks of the sunny plain and its mountain boundary. 
Returning, I clambered over the ruins of the mere external face of the 
propylon; and when I was doubling whether I had ever before performed 
such a feat of climbing, I found myself, on coming out at the top, still 
under the portal ! What a gateway it must have been ! A loosened 
jamb which slanted over my head made me feel as one might under a 
falling oak. Looking through, towards the palace, I saw what at once 
drew my eyes away from the ranges of columns, and perspective of 



THE RAMASEUM. 



163 



courts and chambers ;— the remains of the largest statue that even 
Egypt ever produced. It is only from a distance that this mass of gra- 
nite would be perceived to be a statue, so enormous is its bulk. It lies 
overthrown among the fragments of its limbs; the fragments themselves 
being masses which it would not be easy to move. The foot looks like 
a block preparing for a colossal statue. I had the curiosity to measure 
the second toe, and found its length from the fork to be two feet seven 
inches. I climbed upon the pile, walking up the inclined plane of its 
shoulder, and picking my way on the smooth surface of its neck, 
and the remains of its cheek. Some travelers have obtained a sure 
footing by setting their feet in the hieroglyphic letters on its back. The 
features are gone, the greater part of the face being spht away for mill- 
stones by the Arabs ! How such a mass could be overthrown from the 
base remains a mystery. Every writer seems to conclude that the 
Persians or Ptolemy Lathyrus effected this kind of ruin throughout 
Thebes: but I do not know why we may not suppose an earthquake to 
be the agent. At Ei Karnac the devastation is such as to defy the be- 
lief that human agency could have been employed. Enormous columns 
are there overthrown from the base in one fall, — their circular stones 
lying overlapping each other Hke a row of cheeses : and this without 
any traces of mines, or other channel for the application of explosives. 
The mountains of stones also of the great propyla at El Karnac, show 
plainly that they fell at once ; and there are no means known to us, even 
now, after all our study of gunpowder, which could cause such an over- 
throw as that at one stroke, and without leaving any traces of the means. 
But, supposing this mighty Ramases to have been prostrated by an 
earthquake, the question remains, how he came here from Syene. 
Whether the working was done here or at Syene, the granite was 
brought from thence. Sir G. Wilkinson gives its weight as somewhere 
about 887 tons, 5^ cwt.*^ How should we now set about quarrying and 
conveying such a mass some hundreds of miles? 

Beyond this statue, which used to sit in the area, beside the entrance 
to the place, the building looks like a wood in some petrified region 
outside our world. The unexpanded lotus is still, to my eye, the most 
beautiful kind of column : but the fufl-blown cup is more appropriate 
perhaps to the larger pillars. I Hke the eighteen smaller pillars of the 
great hall here better than the twelve larger. The lighting of this hall 
is beautiful. The roof in the centre was raised some feet above the late- 
ral roofing; so that large oblong spaces were left for a sight of the blue 
sky; and when they admitted the slanting rays of the rising and setting 
sun upon this grove of pillars, and, through them, lighted up the pic- 
tured walls, the glory must have been great. Forty-eight pillars sup- 
ported these roofs ; — roofs which were painted starry and blue like the 
sky. The hall was one hundred feet long. Beyond it extend pillared 
chambers, in succession and in groups, till we come upon mere traces 
of their walls and bases of their columns; and at last, out upon the bare 
rock. Throughout this range of building, the ground rises and the roofs 



• Modem Egypt and Thebes, 11. 145. 



164 



EASTERN LIFE. 



sink, and the walls close in, so that the whole edifice contracts, the 
door-ways lessening in proportion; and an appearance is given of a 
longer perspective than exists. 

In the sculptures on the Avails, the king pays his duty to the gods, 
and receives privileges from them. The Supreme is here ; with the 
other two who complete the highest triad : and some inferior deities in- 
troduce the king into their presence, while the god of letters, Thoth, 
notes the dates of the royal victories on his palm-branch. Elsewhere, 
the Supreme presents him with Life and Power : and in the same hall, 
the Supreme gives him the falchion and sceptres, ordering him, as 
the inscription tells us, to smite his foreign enemies with the one, and 
rule Egypt with the other.* How he obeyed these orders, other pic- 
tures and legends tell us. One captive group, whom he holds by the 
hair, are declared to be " foreign chiefs :" and there are Asiatic and 
other distant enemies among the vanquished in the battle-pieces, and 
the names of towns inscribed among the legends, as well as represented 
in sculptures of storming and sieges. As for his home afTairs, we find 
a procession of twenty-three of his sons, and a group of three daugh- 
ters. The names of the sons are all inscribed. Elsewhere there is a 
procession of priests, bearing the figures of the Theban ancestors of the 
king.t There is an inscription in the great hall, on one of the archi- 
traves, describing the valuable and beautiful character of this edifice, 
and dedicating the sculptures to his father, — the Supreme, who says, 
"I grant that your edifice shall be as stable as the sky." (Alas ! to 
look round upon it now !) Isis adds, " 1 grant you long life to govern 
Egypt. "J The next chamber seems, as some of the learned think, to 
have been the library of the palace. The ceihng bears an astronomical 
subject; and an inscription, declaratory of the value of the building of 
this apartment, alludes to the "books of Thoth," the god of letters. 
This primitive Mercury is here attended, as Champollion records, by 
a figure with an eye on his head, and surmounted by a legend " Sense 
of Sight ;" the goddess Saf being attended in like manner by a figure 
with an ear on his head, and labelled " Sense of Hearing :" — (Solem.) 
Champoihon interprets these figures as indicators or guardians of the 
library, — " the books of Thoth." On its walls, the priests bear shrines 
in procession. But before the king had leisure, and perhaps qualifica- 
tion for thus honoring the gods and himself, he had to gain his fame, 
add to his dominions, and put down his enemies. On the outer walls, 
accordingly, we find his adventures, in a wonderful collection of battle 
sculptures. What we see are a mere remnant of what existed. The 
greater number lie in fragments under the mounds of fallen stones : 
but enough are left to teach us much. The battle-scene on the wall of 
the area exceeds any representation I ever saw for quantity in a given 
space. It is barbaric, though including tokens of no mean civilization. 
There is the common barbarism of making the conqueror and his equi- 
page gigantic in comparison with all the other figures. He stands in a 



* Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 154. 
J Champollion. Lettres sur I'Egypte. 



t Ibid. 151. 



THE RAMASEUM. 



165 



fine attitude in his flying chariot, his bow in hand (which he draws 
behind his head) and the reins tied round his waist. Two quivers 
crossed are at his right hand ; and the exterior one is decorated with an 
extended hon. The king's real Hon is visible in the battle too. The 
conqueror drives over prostrate and bound captives; and men are fall- 
ing around him in all manner of desperate attitudes. The siege and 
river-scenes are very curious; the scahng-Iadder, the shields, the 
bridges, fosses and towers (labeled " the strong town of Watsch or 
Batsch"), giving us much insight into the civilization of the time. 
The phalanx of spearmen is capital ; their spear-heads being carefully 
distinguished from the ripple of the little blue river in which such large 
men are floundering! Then there is the drowned chief whom his peo- 
ple are trying to revive; and the city wall plainly distinguished from 
the rock on which it is built. The horses are finely given ; and so is 
the king. Here, as in others of the old sculptures, we come upon what 
looks like an odd stroke of humor now and then, as in the ass stagger- 
ing and falling under the weight of a bag of spoil, — meant probably to 
be thus pointed out as gold. But the humor may be merely in our 
view of the coalescence of the most literal representation with a method 
of art which we have been accustomed to consider formal and conven- 
tional beyond all other. 

The most beautiful point of view for this palace was from about a 
quarter of a mile to the south, where, looking back upon it, its soft-tinted 
grove of pillars rose behind the copse of dark tamarisks and acacias 
which intervened. This was happily not our only view of the Rama- 
seum. It lay in our way from some other objects, and I became quite 
familiar with it before the week was out. 

We visited to-day a very beautiful temple at El-Kurneh ; to me the 
most interesting, on the whole, of any of the edifices at Thebes. It is 
old, being begun by the father of the great Ramases, in honor of his 
father, and completed by his son in honor of himself. 1 will abstain 
from giving any detailed account of it, and merely mention some of its 
peculiarities. 

There were once sphinxes in the dromos, the remains of which are 
still traceable. These sphinxes represented King Osirei himself, con- 
veying the favorite boast of great men of an early time — their union of 
intellectual power and physical strength. Then comes a ruined pylon — 
once the second — and another dromos which brings us to the beautiful 
portico; beautiful, though no two pairs of its columns are at the same 
distance from each other. These ten columns are composed of the 
stalks of water plants, bound together below the capital, where they ex- 
pand, and are again gathered in by the abacus. This very ancient 
Egyptian order gratified me more than any later ones. In a dedication 
inscription within we find the following declaration of the great Rama- 
ses, to whom the Supreme, Amun Ra, here again presents the symbol 
of Life. "Ramases, the beloved of Amun, has dedicated this work to 
his father Amun Ra, king of gods, having made additions for him to 
the temple of his father, the king, son of the Sun, Osirei."* The part 



* Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 140. 



166 



EASTERN LIFE. 



of the temple which was dedicated by this Osirei to his father, Ramases 
I., was finished by the illustrious grandson of the latter, who put in the 
sculptures. Among these sculptures is one where his grandfather 
stands behind the gods, bearing the insignia of Osiris, and watching 
the introduction and homage of his grandson to the gods. The legend 
over him declares him to be "Ramases deceased, esteemed by the great 
God, &c. &c." Elsewhere in the same apartment, this king and Osirei, 
as well as the gods, are receiving the pious offerings of the great Ra- 
mases. The faces here are astonishingly preserved, and they have a 
full measure of the simplicity and sweetness of the old Egyptian type 
of countenance. I think there can be no doubt of the elegance of this 
temple-palace, in comparison with those of later date. 

Some barbarians, called Charles and Jane Tilt, have cut and blacked 
their names and the date of their visit in large on some of the sacred 
places of this temple. As they have thought fit to publish their owq 
names and adventure in a mischievous manner, they have no right to 
object to a repubhcation which may be useful in the way of warning to 
others. 

I was delighted to find here many of the prevalent symbolical forms 
—here, in this very ancient temple. The boat which v/e find every- 
where had at each end the finest ram's head I had seen. I was pleased 
to meet with grapes among the offerings. Those which I had seen at 
Kalab'sheh with leaves and tendrils, were modern. But here were 
bunches of undeniable grapes. I saw also the elegant lamp I mentioned 
before, and the lion-shaped bier. The globe and asps were on the cor- 
nices, and the ceiling of the portal was beautiful — cartouches and stars 
on a blue ground. 

These were our studies during our first day at Thebes. These 
palaces, built for the busy and illustrious living, were to us like tombs, 
for there was a spirit of death within and around them all. Not only 
the inmates had passed away, but the deeds, the modes of life, the ob- 
jects of reverence, pride and desire. But to-morrow we were to pene- 
trate deeper into the region of the dead. We were to explore some of 
the wonders of the Death valley of Thebes. 



CHAPTER XY. 

THEBES.— OLD EGYPTL\N VIEWS OF DEATH AND HEREAFTER.— THE 
PRIESTS.— IXTERMENTS.—T03IB OF OSIREI. 

The most striking thing at Thebes is perhaps the evidence on every 
hand of the importance to the old Egyptian mind of the state of the 
dead. To the philosopher there is nothing surprising in this; for he 
knows that it must be so to an infant race, inexperienced in the history 
of man, and unlearned as to the powers of the human mind, and the 
relative value of its aims. Everywhere the mind of man is active, un- 
satisfied, and aspiring; and while he knows so little of the world he lives 



EGYPTIAN VIEWS OF DEATH. 



167 



in, and the companions beside him, and the unseen region of ideas which 
lies about him as infantine nations do, he is impelled to refer his activity 
and his desires to the future which he supposes to contain what he at 
present wants and cannot find. It is with puerile man as it is with the 
child who is never satisfied with the present, but always stretching for- 
ward into the unknown future, — not knowing the value of what is under 
his hand, but neglecting it in dreams of what he shall have and do in 
some desirable state by and by. The aspiration is instinctive, and 
therefore right: but as yet unenlightened and undisciplined. As he 
grows up, the present becomes more to him, and the future less. In 
proportion as he becomes truly wise he discovers that in the present 
scene and moment lies more than his best industry can understand and 
his best powers achieve. He brings home his faculties ; and finds in 
the present enough to occupy them all, and to fill his life completely full 
of interest, activity, and advancement. It is only a child, grown or un- 
grown — an ignorant and undisciplined child — who would weep for more 
worlds to conquer: and he is the wisest man who knows that he has 
always many unexplored and ungoverned worlds on his hands which 
should leave him no leisure for looking forward into a future which he 
cannot penetrate. It is with races of men as with individuals. Not 
knowing yet how to employ their aspirations and desires on the un- 
fathomable and inexhaustible universe in which they are placed ; not 
knowing how adequate their existing human powers are, if fully ex- 
ercised, to their present human work ; not knowing how exact is the 
momentary retribution of fidelity or unfaithfulness to their powers and 
their work, they are perpetually referring to the future for a wider scene, 
for new powers, and for arbitrary reward and punishment. There is 
nothing blameworthy or despicable in this. On the contrary, the tend- 
ency comes in happily to lift men over their infantine age of inexperi- 
ence, as the child is ennobled by the forecast of his hopes before he can 
be yet more ennobled by the wisdom of his self-knowledge. And every 
working of instinct, every direction of natural aspiration, is to be revered 
in its proper place and at its proper time. We truly respect, accordingly, 
the child's or the peasant's notion of a literal judgment day, when there 
will be a process of trial, with books of account opened, and a sentence 
passed in words, and burning inflicted in the one case, and whatever 
the individual most desires conferred in the other. We truly respect 
these notions in the child and the peasant, while we know that no en- 
lightened and disciplined man looks forward to any such actual scene. 
And the enlightened and disciplined man knows that while he continu- 
ally thinks less of the future, as the inestimable present of life and duty 
opens before his contemplation and his industry, his hold of that in- 
estimable present will appear weak and careless to a wiser than he who 
will come after him. Thus must we, who look back some little way, 
and from some small height, upon the track of ages, regard with serious 
respect, the engrossing attention that infantine nations gave to death and 
the state of the dead; the records they have left of their puerile pride, 
ambition and violence proving that, at the same time, they were but 
little aware of the value of what they held in the present life, with all 



168 



EASTERN LIFE. 



its duties, its spiritual powers and privileges. As I said before, the 
most striking thing at Thebes is the evidence on every hand of the im- 
portance to the old Egyptian mind of the state of the dead: and these 
evidences will be regarded by the philosopher with the solemn reverence 
which the wise cannot but feel towards every form in which Faith, the 
noblest of human faculties, manifests itself. The literal truth of the 
objects of faith, when those objects are the highest that can be conceived, 
is a small matter; the exercise of the faculty is everything: and though 
the imagery of the Egyptian tombs is to us only imagery, while to their 
inmates it was anticipated fact, we may, in our sympathy with their 
mood of faith, enter those tombs with an awe perhaps as strong as 
theirs. 

When the Pharaohs built their palaces and temples, they had more 
aims than one to fulfil. They blazoned their own deeds upon them ; 
but they glorified the deeds of their fathers, even more carefully than 
their own: and they must have had in view the sympathy and edifi- 
cation of other men, living and to live. But their careful choice and 
elaborate preparation of their tomlDS, with every possible resort in the 
adornment of them, show us that the unseen state was the most inte- 
resting subject, and that of the firmest faith to them. The Pharaohs 
were wont to devote the early years of their reigns to royal deeds of 
rule and conquest : and they did not begin to build tlieir palaces and 
temples till they had achieved deeds with which to glorify them, and 
brought home captives to do the work of building them. But it was quite 
otherwise with their tombs. Everyman who could afford himself a tomb, 
began its preparation early in life. A palace or temple could be carried 
on to completion by a successor; but a tomb was sealed up when the 
owner was laid in it. It could not, therefore, under the uncertainty of 
life, be too soon begun; and their practice seems to show that it could 
not be too long elaborated. Few or none appear to be finished in every 
part; and some were in progress through a long course of years. 

The most prominent idea presented to us in these tombs is that their 
makers considered them to be really and truly an abode ; — literally " a 
long home;" or, as they called them, "everlasting habitations;" and 
to be prepared and provided accordingly. — The way to the long home 
of the Theban kings is very appropriate and most impressive ; a suc- 
cession of winding defiles between grand but most desolate rocks, the 
recesses of which might seem to invite the candidate for death to come 
and rest here in the depth of silence, till his thousands of years of sus- 
pense should be fulfilled: — to rest in silence, but not in solitude: not 
in the solitude of the wide desert, but in the still congregation of this 
deep valley. 

To the old Egyptians, as to all who are heedless of the unborn 
human race in interest for those who have lived, the true congregation 
of the human race must always have been looked for beyond the 
grave — so immeasurably must the dead ever outnumber existing men. 
Every man must have felt himself one of a very small company in com- 
parison with that which he was to join. But the case of the kings 
was strong indeed. Each one of them lived solitary; and it was only 



THEBES. 



169 



when he died that he could enter among his peers. He went from the 
solitude of that busy, peopled plain to the sanctified society of the 
Valley of Death. To him, this was the great event to which, as we 
see, he was looking forward during the best years of his life; and he 
devoted his wealth, his thoughts, and the most sacred desires of his 
heart to preparation for his promotion to the society of kings, and the 
presence of the gods. There, an abode would be prepared for him. 
On the walls of his tomb he attempted to paint the succession of man- 
sions in the great heavenly house which he was to inhabit at last: but 
meanwhile, he was to dwell, for a vast length of time, in the long home 
in the valley, where his peers were lying still (whether asleep or vigi- 
lant) all round about him. 

How fit and impressive is the choice of this site for the metropolis 
of the dead, can be conceived of only by contrasting it with that of the 
metropolis of the living. Both might be viewed at once from the moun- 
tain ridges behind western Thebes. There is a ridge where strangers 
are taken now, to overlook the plain; and glorious is the view: but 
to-day I went much higher still, to a peak whence I could see quite 
down into the Valley of the Tombs, and over every recess of the vivid 
green plain, — every nook which lay between the Arabian and Lybian 
hills. I chose to see it as it once was. I made myself three thousand 
years old, and saw from my perch what was worth looking at. Great 
as are the existing marvels of Thebes, they are, from this height, mere 
indications of the presence of man. Sprinkled over the expanse of 
verdure, one notices a few heaps of stones, — the temples and palaces; 
and a pair of sentinels, — the Colossi: and across the blue and brim- 
ming river, a little cobweb railing, which is El-Uksur; and a group of 
massive towers, — which is El-Karnac. This, with all its soft freshness 
of coloring, all its African brightness, is too sad and dreary to dwell 
on. It is better to see it with the eyes of three thousand years ago. 

There lies the city below, filling up all the plain, except where there 
is a girdle of fields. It is those gardens and groves among the houses 
which make it cover so large a space; for there never was, in this 
world, such a collection of houses as would cover this plain. How 
the gardens spread, not only round the palaces, but behind the ranges 
of dwellings which we should call streets! How their ponds gleam 
on the eye, and their clustres of palms overshadow their lawns, and 
intervene between the eye and the flat house-roofs ! I can distinguish 
the children pushing out from among the reeds in this nearer garden, in 
their little papyrus boat of nautilus shape. — How finely the city rami- 
fies, — with no circuit wall, but temple ranges running out in all direc- 
tions ! That advanced post of temples at intervals is a sufficient defence, 
if any foe should dare to come. They are perfect fortifications; and 
the watchmen on the summits of the propyla command the valley in 
both directions, as far as the irregular hill boundary admits. What 
masses these are, — these four which command the plain ! El-Karnac 
and El-Uksur over yonder, and the Ramaseum and Medeenet Haboo 
below me ! How they stand, as if each calling to the other ! How 
each stretches out its dromos, and plants its files of sphinxes, or its 



170 



EASTERN LIFE. 



pair of colossal sentinels, as if to proclaim " here lives a king, or the 
glory of a king!" Far over yonder, in the avenue between El-Karnac 
and El-Uksur, I see some movement ; — surely it is the floating of pen- 
nons, and the carrying of standards. If it crosses the river, I may see 
what it means. Meantime, how gay is the blue winding Nile, with 
its heavy, slow-moving boats, — the gay checkered sails up, and the 
row of long oars glancing in the sun ! How pretty are those villas 
scattered about the edge of the desert, each with its plot of garden or 
field sloping down into the fertile region of the plain ; each with its 
canopy of shady palms ; and every palm swaying in the same light 
breeze which fills the sails on the river, and floats the pennons of that 
multitude in the avenues of El-Karnac ! Here is a multitude below 
me too. The women are exchanging their goods in the areas of the 
streets,— -bargaining slowly, it seems, because, having no coin, they 
have to settle the worth of their valuables before they can agree on that 
of their produce. And those men, — how they are toiling about that 
sledge, — advancing it by hair's-breadths under its load of granite; 
a mass as large as any merchant's house in the city! What a team of 
harnessed men, straining at the load ! By their light complexions, they 
are Asiatic captives. They are helping to build yonder palace, on 
whose walls their captivity is to be commemorated. — The wind 
strengthens, and brings up some sounds which tell what a multitude 
is stirring below. Through the hum and buzz there comes the shock 
of the mallet falling on the wedge in the quarry, and the lowing of the 
cattle on the farm at the edge of the plain below. And was not that 
a breath of music? Yes: the blast of a distant trumpet, and some 
shrill pipe tones. Ah ! it is from that concourse over the water. 
How the multitude comes sweeping down to the river's brink ! Surely 
that crowd of boats is going to bring them over. Yes ; there is the 
funereal boat for the transport of the dead; and those others are making 
a bridge for the passage of the living. What a train they will be, 
winding through the defiles of that death region on my left hand! 
How still it is at this moment! Nothing there but the shadows 
thrown into the hollows! No sound but of the flapping of the wings 
of yonder eagle ; for the wild dog is quiet till night. What a contrast 
is that parched, silent, desolate valley to this gay and stirring plain ; 
and how complete, to those on either side, is the barrier of these rocky 
hills which I, from my perch, can overlook ! To-day, as yonder funeral 
train winds through it, the echoes of the valley of death will be awakened, 
and they will answer to notes of wailing, or shouts of boasting; and 
its hot mounds will be alive with shadows : but to-morrow, the two 
regions which are separated but by a partition of rock, will be once 
more opposed as activity to oblivion, and Life to Death. 

As it appeared to me from that pinnacle, it appeared daily when I 
rode through the Defiles of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. I 
felt that there was never a nobler seat for a metropolis of the living 
than the plain of Thebes, and never a nobler approach than by these 
ravines from the city of the living to the kingdom of the dead. 

Every Egyptian king was, as I have said, a priest. He might be 



THE PRIESTS. 



171 



chosen out of the Second Caste, — the Military : but he must become a 
priest before he could assume the sovereignty. It was a sufficient 
reason for this that the king must always thus be an instructed person, 
and in fellowship with the high class who held all the dignities and 
privileges of knowledge and sacred office : but there was another reason. 

» The sovereign in Egypt was assisted in his government by a council 
of priests: and of course it was necessary for him to hold, in common 
with his advisers, that knowledge and those secrets of Custom by which 
the nation was governed. Before looking at their most interesting 
existing work, it may be well to form in our minds some slight picture 
of this remarkable order of men. 

Herodotus gives us information of their personal habits, which were 
carefully arranged with a view to their perfection as models before the 
eyes of the people. We all know how much more necessary, and how 
much more difficult extreme cleanliness is in Egypt than elsewhere. 
The priests shaved their heads ; and their whole bodies were shaved 
every three days, that, as Herodotus says, there might not, by possi- 
bility, be any vermin or soil on those who served the gods.* Twice 
by day, and twice by night, they washed in cold water : and they wore 
no other clothing than a dress of linen, and shoes of papyrus. They 
were daily served with the sacred meats of the temples, ready cooked; 
but from some articles of food, as fish, they abstained ; and were com- 
pelled to be very moderate in the use of wine. The food they abstained 
from seems to have been such as tended to produce leprous and other 
eruptive diseases. They had an extreme and mysterious horror of 
beans ; never permitting them to be sown in Egypt, or touched when 
found growing wild. Whatever were their reasons were probably 
those of Pythagoras in warning his disciples against touching beans. 

; ■ Some have supposed (after a hint in Aristotle) that Pythagoras meant 
to warn his pupils against political action, — the ballot vote being given 
by a bean : but as the philosopher derived so much else from Egypt, 
and as we know the strength of the reprobation of beans there, we 
need only suppose him to have been more aware of the priestly reasons 
for that reprobation than we are. 

It need scarcely be pointed out that much more was included in 
the class of sacred things among ancient nations (as among modern 
half-civilized ones) than with us. Legislation, Geometry, Medicine, 
every science was a sacred study among the Egyptians, and engrossed 
by the priests ; as was the whole of their religious philosophy. They 
made laws which they enforced without rendering any reason, holding 
that the people had " nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." 
They explored many regions of natural science, giving the people the 
results in the form of divination and magic. They held among them- 
selves the doctrines of the unity of God, and of a divine moral govern- 
ment, and lowered their doctrine to meet the comprehension of the 
people, by deifying the attributes of God, and making local rulers of 
them. The testimony of ages has proved the vice of this method of 



* Herod. II. 37. 



172 



EASTERN LIFE. 



proceeding : but we must remember that the Egyptian priesthood had 
not this testimony of ages. We must remember how they stood, a 
little band of observers, among the wonders and mysteries of the uni- 
verse; and that, as yet, they had to collect the facts of external nature 
to a great extent before they could look far into causes (so-called) ; and 
that these facts were not regarded by them with the calm eye of know- 
ledge, but the bashful glance of new and awe-struck perception. They 
could hardly receive such knowledge as they had, otherwise than as a 
special gift and revelation to themselves, as students of the universe. 
It was not known then, not dreamed of by any one, that knowledge is 
the equal birthright of all, and that truth is of the last importance to 
every human being. We are not, therefore, io reprobate in the Egyp- 
tian priesthood what is worthy of reprobation now in any man or body 
of men ; — a distrust of the general understanding, as compared with 
our own ; a keeping back of the knowledge which is the birthright of 
all ; an offer, under veils and disguises, of that truth which every man 
has an equal right to see in its native purity and nobleness. The 
Egyptian priesthood tried the experiment of a civil government which 
was probably the fittest at the time for its purposes — those purposes 
being, we may hope, centered in the good of the people : — Pythagoras, 
at least, thus understood the matter. The experiment, which lay 
within the terms of natural laws, appears to have succeeded ; the 
Egyptian mode of governing society by a council of the wisest and 
best having lasted longer than perhaps any other government that na- 
tions have experienced. The Egyptian priesthood tried another expe- 
riment, which failed, because it violated the terms of natural laws. 
They tried the experiment of making themselves gods to the people in 
regard to the administration of knowledge and natural benefits. They 
took upon themselves to measure and to manage the minds of men in 
regard to matters which in fact they held only in common with all men. 
They did this, I doubt not, in all sincerity, fidelity, and benevolence ; 
but it was a mistake of ignorance ; and it was followed by its natural 
retribution. Ignorance, whether guilty or unavoidable, is always pre- 
sumptuous. These priests were ignorant and presumptuous, while 
most earnestly intent on doing good with such knowledge as they had. 
They assumed the exclusive possession of that to which all had aright; 
and they corrupted themselves and their charge together. The philo- 
sophy they held languished and nearly died out. Their own order 
deteriorated in power, knowledge, and character; and the people be- 
came idolaters, sinking into that weakness and under that doom which 
superstition brings on as surely as the pollution of the atmosphere 
causes lassitude and lingering death. The experiment of spiritual 
government failed ; but we are not to deal with the priests for it as if 
they had had our thousands of years of added experience. 

I never believed during my school days, and I am sure I never shall 
now, that any order of men ever carried on a wilful and deliberate fraud, 
from generation to generation, for any purpose whatever. I used to 
suspect in my schooldays, as I believe now, tliat all the heathen priest- 
hoods which were held up for my scorn as bands of impostors, had 



THE PRIESTS. 



173 



faith, one way or another, in what they taught. And there seems every 
reason to believe this now of the Egyptian priesthood, who taught more 
extraordinary things perhaps than any other. If we do but put our- 
selves in their places for an instant, we may perhaps see how many 
things may have been venerable and true to them, which we, with our 
knowledge and our ignorance, our experience and our prejudices, do 
not know how to treat seriously at all. 

To them, nothing was so wonderful, so mysterious, so important as 
Life and Organization. Their purity of life and habits — their taking 
but one wife, and banishing all indecency from their temple rites — 
enlightens us to much that we might reprobate otherwise in the illus- 
trations of some of their festivals, and a few of their doctrines. Perhaps 
they were wiser than we are in their reverence for natural instincts ; 
and they were certainly not wrong in thinking life and its production 
the most sacred and the most real, and therefore the most important 
fact with which the human race can have concern. When they by de- 
grees led the people down into gross brute-worship (if indeed it is true 
that they did so), they certainly misapplied or ill-conveyed their reverent 
appreciation of the great fact of life; but the fault was in the misappli- 
cation, and not in the philosophy which recognized in life, wherever 
found, something altogether sacred, before which the human intellect 
must bow down, as an insoluble mystery. I am sure that we are wrong 
in the other extreme, in the levity or utter thoughtlessness with which 
we regard the races of inferior animals, which have shared with ours, 
for thousands of years, the yet unsolved mystery of sentient existence, 
without sharing with us anything else than what is necessary for the 
support of that existence. We know no more of the experience, one 
may say, the mind, of the cattle, the swallows, the butterflies, and worms 
about us than if they lived in another planet. They and man have met 
hourly for all these thousands of years without having found any means 
of communication; without having done anything to bridge over the 
gulf which so separates them, that they appear mere phantoms to each 
other. The old Egyptian priests recognized the difficulty, and made a 
mistake upon it; — disastrous enough. We, for the most part, commit 
the other great mistake of not recognizing the mystery. We are not 
likely ever to embody our consciousness of it in any form of brute wor- 
ship; but we are hardly qualified to criticise those who fell into that 
perhaps sublime error in the early days of human speculation. 

Then again, about their Oracles, Magic, and Medicine ; — it is need- 
less and therefore unjust, to attribute to them any artifice or insincerity. 
All who have duly inquired into that class of natural facts, know that 
among human faculties exist those of perception or apprehension of 
distant and of future events ; and some powers of sympathetic operation, 
whose nature and limits are as yet but little understood. Those powers 
are as yet but too little inquired into, notwithstanding the example and 
exhortations of Bacon, Cuvier, Laplace, and other philosophers who 
were rendered by their philosophy meek enough to learn from nature. 
Finding, as we do, indisputable proofs that at present the human being 
is capable of various states of consciousness, and of knowing events 



174 



EASTERN LIFE. 



which are happening afar, and of foreknowing events which are future 
— sometimes spontaneously, and sometimes by means of an agency pur- 
posely employed; — knowing, on the other hand, that history abounds 
with records which everybody believes more or less, of prophecy, of 
preternatural (so-called) knowledge, of witchcraft, unaccountable sympa- 
thies, and miraculous cures ; we have every reason to suppose that the 
Egyptian priesthood encountered and held the facts which some of us 
encounter and hold, and employed them as sincerely and devoutly as 
they employed other facts in natural philosophy. It is probable that 
the oracles were true: and we have no right to doubt that the priests 
believed them true — as earnestly as they believed that they could cure 
the sick whom they carried into their temples, and on whose heads they 
religiously laid their hands, with invocations to the gods. The faculties 
which drew^ the attention of Bacon and others are found more vigorous, 
more spontaneous, and more easily excitable among orientals than 
among ourselves. If we find, by the half-dozen, merely by opening 
our minds to the fact, cases of far-seeing, and fore-seeing, and curative 
power, it is probable that such cases were familiar to the heathen priest- 
hoods of old ; and that they sincerely believed that persons so gifted 
held a revealing commission from the gods. While fully aware of the 
means necessary for eliciting the faculty, and using those means, the 
priest might wait on the speech of the oracular somnambule, believing 
it to proceed from the veritable inspiration of the god. This is not the 
place for bringing together the evidence that exists about the dealings of 
the Egyptian priests with the sick and infirm: but it is curious; and it 
shows no cause for the assumption that they were jugglers, or in any 
way insincere in their practice. They probably believed that they 
should give relief by the " touching with the hands," which, as Solon 
tells us, "will immediately restore to health," when soothing medicines 
are of no avail; and by that "stroking with gentle hands" which 
iEschylus says was to be had on the Nile:* and they were probably 
justified in their belief by the results. Nothing but a very large pro- 
portion of cures will account for the continued celebrity of any seat of 
health during a sequence of many centuries. 

As to the oracles, there were many in Egypt ; and they were fa- 
mous from the earliest times of which we have any record. The two 
most celebrated were those of Amun Ra, in the Oasis of Amun ; and 
that of Buto in the city of that name.f Herodotus tells a curious story 
of the establishment of the oracles of Amun Ra and of Dodona.t He 
heard two versions ; — one from the priests of Amun at Thebes ; the 
other from the priestesses of the oracle at Dodona. The Greek priest- 
esses told him that two black doves were carried off from Thebes ; 
one of which went into the Lybian Desert, and the other came to Do- 
dona, perched on an oak, and spoke, saying that it was the will of the 
king of the gods that he should have an oracle there. The dove which 

* Prometheus to lo : " There Zeus will render you sane, stroking you with gentle 
hand and simply touching you."' This sanctuary at Canopus was celebrated for the 
cures wrought by the god. 

t Herod. II. S3. $ Ibid. 54, 55. 



THE PRIESTS. 



175 



flew to the Lybian oasis delivered a similar command there from Amun 
Ra. The story of the Theban priests to Herodotus was that two wo- 
men, sacred to the god, were carried off from Thebes by the Phceni- 
cians, and set up oracles at the Oasis and at Dodona. They were 
probably carried off for the sake of that power of provision which had 
caused their consecration at Thebes, and which they exercised after- 
wards at the two new oracular seats. Herodotus says expressly that 
there were no priestesses in Egypt :* yet it is certain that women of 
the priesdy caste were, in one way or another, employed and conse- 
crated about the temples ; and in all purity and honor. They were 
probably the utterers of the oracle ; and might be also the dispensers 
of health in the sanctuaries. Among so large a body as that of the 
Egyptian priesthood, it is probable that there was never any want of 
somnambules, who would be looked upon as chosen by the god of the 
region to deliver his oracles; and who would do it, while the faculty 
worked clearly (which we now find to be rarely for any long time) ; 
and without any need of jugglery at the time, or occasion to suspect it 
now. Diodorus Siculus tells us of a daughter of Sesostris who seems 
to have had the faculty as eminently as Joan of Arc, exercising it with 
regard to her father's victories as Joan did about her own. Her fa- 
ther, being king, was also High-priest, and must have known how far 
to trust his daughter's divination : and he planned his proceedings, and 
prepared for his conquests, under her direction.! Herodotus observes 
that this Theban oracle and that of Dodona are much like each other :f 
that the art of foretelling future events, as practised in the Greek tem- 
ples, was derived from Egypt : and that it is certain that the Egyptians 
were the first of the human race who established feasts and public as- 
semblies, processions, and the manner of approaching God and holding 
intercourse with him : and that the Greeks had borrowed these cus- 
toms from the Egyptians. 

Every god had, as Herodotus tells us, a high-priest and several other 
priests ; each of whom is succeeded on his death by his son.§ The 
principle of their sacrifices was to offer to the gods what was hostile 
or unacceptable to them ; so that the sacrifice, while a sign of homage, 
was so through an act of vindictiveness. The animals offered were 
usually those in which a wicked soul was, or might be supposed to be, 
residing at the time. They laid hands on the head of the victim, 
charged it with maledictions, || and then got rid of it as fast as possible. 
If there were Greeks at market, the head was sold to them : if not, it 
was thrown into the river. The bull Apis was, as everybody knows, 
black, with white marks ; the star on the forehead being the sign of 
its being an incarnation of the deity. ^ The bullocks offered in sacri- 
fice were red, because Typho was supposed to be of that complexion : 
and if the priests found a single hair on the animal which was not red, 
they rejected it.** 

* Herod. II. 35. | Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I. 261. 

J Herod. H. 58. § Ibid. 37. || Ibid. 39. 

11 Herodotus says (III. 28.) "The Egyptians say that a flash of lightning descends 
from heaven upon her," (the cow-mother of Apis,) " and that from this ray she con- 
ceives the god Apis." *» Herod. II. 38. 



176 



EASTERN LIFE. 



One of the sacred traditions of Egypt was that Isis had given one- 
third of the land to the priests, on condition of perpetual honors being 
paid to Osiris after his death. We know how Joseph left the priests' 
lands in their possession when he bought up all the rest of the land of 
Egypt : and when, after the famine, he decreed that the king should 
have a fifth part of the produce, he excepted the lands of the priests 
from the impost.* The personal wants of the priests were all supplied 
from the temples : and thus they were entirely free from the cares of 
life. For one item of property they had the Tombs : and their mo- 
nopoly of a property in such constant request must have been very 
profitable. 

It appears that there was a lake made near every capital city in 
Egypt,t for the transit of the dead ; and a sacred boat to bear the hearse ; 
and a boatman whose official name, written in Greek, was Charon.l 
The funeral trains were obliged to pass over this lake on the way to 
the tomb; but they might return by land. The purpose of the obliga- 
tory custom of crossing the lake was that all the dead might pass 
through the same ordeal before admission to their "eternal habitation," 
as the priests called the tomb. This ordeal was judgment by the forty- 
two§ assessors who, on earth, performed the first stage of the work 
which was to be completed by the forty-two heavenly assessors, who 
awaited the dead within the threshold of the unseen world. Notice 
was given to these judges of the day of the funeral; and they stood in 
a half circle on the nearer shore of the lake, awaiting the arrival of the 
funeral train. Any person might accuse the deceased in their presence 
of any immoral act. If the accusation was proved, the deceased was 
not allowed to pass. If the accuser could not substantiate his story, 
he was severely punished. Even kings !| have been known to be turned 
back from the place of embarkation, when acts of injustice have been 
proved against them : and it appears that the priests had no more ex- 
emption than others from this ordeal. Those of the rejected dead who 
had left a family behind them were carried home, and their mummy- 
cases set upright against the wall of some chamber ; a perpetual spec- 
tacle of shame and grief to their families, who suffered acutely from the 
disgrace of what had happened. Those who were poor and friendless, 
as well as vicious, were put into the ground where the rejection took 
place ; and this was the shore where their melancholy ghosts wandered, 
if poets say true, pining for the Elysian fields which lay beyond ; those 
Elysian fields^ being the beautiful meadows which, in the principal 
burial-place of the Nile valley, at Memphis, extended beyond the lake 
of the Dead, all flowery with lotus and blossoming reeds. 

Besides persons convicted of criminal acts, debtors M^ere excluded 
from burial.** A creditor might possess himself of the mummy till the 

* Genesis, XLVII. 22, 26. f Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, V. 420. 

J Diodorus, I. 92. § According to Chanipollion. 

II Diodorus, I. 72. IT Ibid. 96. 

** According to Herodotus, (II. 136) this was a very old arrangement, dating from 
a law of Asychis, who, early in the First Period, built the Brick Pyramid. "Under 
his reign, as commerce suflered from a scarcity of money, he published the priests 



INTERMENTS. 



177 



family had satisfied his claims; and the priests could refuse a tomb till 
it could be paid for. It became the ambition of the family of a debtor 
to furnish forth, sooner or later, a grand funeral, which, as the liabili- 
ties of the deceased must be first discharged, was in fact a restoration 
of the family honor. — In some cases of strong conjugal affection, the 
survivor retained at home the body of the departed, that both might be 
carried to the tomb together: but in such cases, it was always under- 
stood that a respectable funeral was in reserve. 

The priests kept a number of tombs always ready, — probably 
covered with the ordinary kinds of paintings, and finished, except in 
the blank spaces left for the name and titles and character of the occu- 
pant. It is certain that services for the dead and offerings to them were 
celebrated at times long after the funeral; and it is thought probable 
that in cases where a new name is put over the old one, and a different 
family has clearly come into possession of the place, there may have 
been a discontinuance of the payments and offerings given for services 
for the deceased, and the priests have let the tomb for a second-hand 
place of burial.* Kings and wealthy families no doubt purchased the 
site, or the excavated chambers, and adorned them according to their 
own taste ; often beginning the work in early manhood, as I have men- 
tioned before, and carrying it on till the day of death. 

When I speak of the services and offerings to the dead, it does not 
follow that these were presented within the tomb. The tomb appears 
to have been closed and sealed at once. But small altars, sculptured 
with offerings, have, in so many instances, been found before the en- 
trances of tombs,! that we may suppose the rites to have been celebrated 
there. 

After permission to pass on had been given by the judges, an eulogy 
on the deceased, and a prayer to the gods for his welfare in Hades, 
were read by one of the officiating priests ; and Charon proceeded in 
his ferrying. When the opposite shore was reached, and the proces- 
sion landed, the ground was sprinkled before the wheels of the funeral 
car; and sometimes palm-branches were strewn in the way. j: The 
body was sometimes crowned with amaranth or other everlastings, or 
with bay-leaves, or fresh flowers. § 

There was much display of sorrow. In the paintings of funeral 
rites, we always see mourners throwing dust on their heads, beating 
themselves, and evidently uttering cries. — In ordinary cases, the body 
was laid in one of the pits or recesses in the tomb : but in the case of 
kings and great men, we know that there was a sarcophagus in a cham- 
ber appropriated to it. 

say, a law which forbade borrowing except on condition of the body of the borrower's 
father being given in pledge. It was added to this law that the creditor should also 
have in his power the burial of the debtor; and that if he refused to pay the debt 
for which he had deposited a pledge so precious, he could not, after his death, be 
laid in the tomb of his fathers, nor in any other; and that he could not, after the 
death of any of his own family, render them this honor." 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, V. 384. t Ibid. V. 387. 

J Ibid. V. 421. § Ibid. V. 423. 

12 



y 



178 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Thus much before the sealing up of the tomb. What afterwards? 

As he had passed the external judgment, he was believed by the 
mourners without to be assured of re-union, in his immortal essence, 
with the Supreme, from whom all being emanates. The family have 
likened him, in the preparation of his body, to Osiris, and have painted 
the emblems of Osiris on his envelop; and will henceforth call him 
by that sacred name. The offerings they bring, and will continue to 
bring occasionally, are not consecrated to their mortal comrade, but to 
the portion of divinity which dwelt in him. — They place behind their 
altar of offerings the images of Isis and Nepthys, the First and the 
Last: and believe that the First and the Last attend at the head and 
feet of the body, as long as it remains in the tomb.* They think of 
him as finding his way in the untried regions which they yet seem to 
themselves to know so familiarly. He leaves behind him the eulogy 
which is inscribed on the entrance wall of his tomb, and is met by 
Thoth, the Conductor of the dead, by whom he is fetched away, and 
led on to a more fearful judgment than that man's judgment by the 
shore of the lake which he has passed with honor. He is announced, 
according to his legend, thus: "Arrival of a soul in Amenti." His 
secret faults, and his sins of omission, of which men could be no judges, 
are now to come under review : and Thoth, whose legend! declares 
him "the Secretary of Justice of the other great gods," is to produce 
his book, in which he has recorded the whole moral life of the soul 
come to judgment. — The forty-two heavenly assessors are believed to 
represent the forty-two sins which the Egyptians believed man to be 
subject to. Each searched the newly-arrived soul, and declared its 
condition in respect to the particular sin.:}: Then came the trial of the 
balance. The symbol of the actions of the candidate are placed in 
one scale, and the symbol of integrity in the other. Thoth looks on, 
ready to record. Horus holds the hand of the candidate; and the 
dog§ watches the process, ready to turn on the condemned if his scale 
should be "found wanting." If all is well, he advances in front of the 
balance, and finds the infant Horus seated on his lotus-blossom before 
the throne; and on the throne is the Judge, prepared to welcome him 
by raising the end of his sceptre, and to permit him to enter among the 
gods within. Of the happy state little was revealed, because, as it was 
declared, " the heart of man could not conceive of it." Almost the 
only particular declared was that there was a tree of Life,|| on whose 
fruit the gods wrote the names of mortals destined to immortality, and 
whose fruit made those who ate of it to be as gods. His relatives 
thought of him as wearing on his head, as a mark of his justification, 

* Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, V. 416, 
t Champollion, Lettres sur TEgypte. 

J Mischief. Blasphemy. Idleness. Stealing divine goods. Lying. Libertinism. 
Impurity. Skepticism (" head-shaking at the words of truth.") Long-speechifying. 
Need for remorse. Gluttony. — Here are some of tlie forty-two sins read off by 
Champollion from the Legends. Lettres sur I'Egypte. 

§ If any one wishes to know the naine of the Egyptian Cerberus, I can indulge 
him with it, — citing Champollion. The name is Teduom-enement. 

II ThePersea. 



INTERMENTS. 



179 



the feather of integrity: and they wrote beside his name, from that 
time forward, the name of the goddess of Justice ; a practice equivalent 
to that of affixing the epithet "justified" to his name. This goddess 
of Justice, Thmei, is present during the trial of the soul: and she is 
identified in the sculptures by her legend " Thmei, who lives in Amenti, 
where she weighs hearts in the balance ; — no sinner escapes her."* 

The survivors of any one for whom a burial has been obtained, but 
who might be suspected of unfitness for the heavenly mansions, were 
enabled to form but too clear an idea of his fate ; for the pains of the 
wicked could be conceived of by human imagination, though the im- 
mortal pleasures of the just could not. The purgatory of the Egyp- 
tians was in fact described definitely enough: and the representations 
of it in the tombs give a strange sensation to the gazer before he has 
become accustomed to them. At the extreme end of a large tomb at 
Thebes,! I saw some marks on the black and stained wall which made 
me hold my candle nearer, and persevere till I had made out the whole 
sculpture, which gave me at last the impression of a bad dream. A 
hopeless-looking pig, with a bristling back, was in a boat, the stern of 
which was towards the heavenly regions. Two monkeys were with 
it, one at the bow, and the other whipping or driving the pig. This 
was a wicked soul, sent back to earth under the conduct of the agents 
of Thoth. The busy and gleeful look of the monkeys, and the hum- 
bled aspect of the pig, were powerfully given. This was the lowest 
state of the punished soul ; but it would have to pass through some 
very mournful ones, and for a very long time, — to be probably a wolf, a 
scorpion, or a kite, or some other odious creature, in weary succes- 
sion, — for a term of from three thousand to ten thousand years. This 
was called passing through its " orbit of necessity." 

We now know enough of the outward state, and of the views and 
expectations of a Pharoah, to understand the illustrations of his tomb. 
He was a priest, and therefore informed of the secret speculations of 
the wise upon the nature of the Divine Government and the destiny of 
man. On account of both his civil and his ecclesiastical rank, he was 
compelled to blazon forth his deeds and his expectations in great pomp. 
He has been laid in the chambers of the tomb with every funereal ob- 
servance ; and he has left on those walls illustrations of his faith which 
the vulgar may take literally, or let alone as unintelligible, while to 
priestly eyes they once told more than we shall now ever understand; 
and through those of a Pythagoras spread a philosophy through the 
world, so lofty as to command the praise at once of heathen, Jew and 
Christian. Here, where the common eye, then as now, could see only 
a household of gods and nothing higher, Pythagoras could see, through 
these transparent shows of attributes, that there was, because there 
must be, some vital centre, from whence they derived their existence. 
While the vulgar saw only in the fate of the damned " the circle of 
necessity," he saw it everywhere, believing that the agency of the cen- 
tral unity was operative wholly through numbers, — which are another 

* Charapollion, Lettres sur I'Egypte. f Bruce's, or the Harper's. 



180 



EASTERN LIFE. 



name for certainty. Where others saw painted the array of the Hours, 
he perceived between each two the chain of Cause and Effect. Where 
others saw altar flames, he recognized the aspirations of the intellect. 
Where others shrank from pictures of torture and dismemberment, he 
calmly studied the conflicts of the intellect and soul. Where others 
saw a range of mummy closets with folding doors, he gained ideas of 
that succession of spheres through which the aspiring spirit has to pass, 
before attaining the vital centre from which it came forth, and to which 
it may, when worthy, return. W^here the vulgar saw — what the priests 
told them to see — " an eternal abode," to which the dead king had 
come from " the inn" of his own palace,* — he knew that here the dust 
would, sooner or later, return to dust, while the spirit had returned to 
Him who had given it forth. Josephus says that Pythagoras was the 
most eminent of the heathens for wisdom and piety ; and believes that 
he would have spoken more wisely still on the highest matters, if he 
had been safe from the malice of the ignorant. — The testimony of 
Herodotus is this :t " These people," the Egyptians, " are the first who 
have advanced the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal: that, 
when the body is dead, the soul enters always into that of some ani- 
mal ; and that, having thus passed successively into all kinds of terres- 
trial, aquatic and aerial creatures, it returns into a human body, during 
its act of birth: and that these different transmigrations take place in 
the space of three thousand years. I know that some Greeks have 
adopted this opinion,— some sooner, and some later ; and that they 
have made use of it as they thought proper. Their names are not 
unknown to me; but I preserve silence upon them." 

If this old traveler, at once so reserved and so garrulous, had spoken 
out here, the first name doubtless, which he would have uttered, would 
have been Pythagoras. 

Among the many tombs open to us, we may choose one for a regu- 
lar, however brief, examination. And the most attractive, without 
question, to any reader whose interest in the subject has carried him 
through this chapter, will be that discovered by Belzoni, about a quar- 
ter of a century ago, whose occupant was Osirei, father of Ramases 
the Great. 

The neighboring peasants observed, about the beginning of the pre- 
sent century, a sinking of the soil in one of the hill sides in the Valley 
of the Tombs. They pointed this out to successive travelers; and 
Belzoni happily looked into the matter. He found a tomb extending 
320 feet into the hill; and how much more, there is no saying, as the 
earth had fallen, and barred further progress. Its depth is great, as it 
descends the whole way, sometimes by inclined planes, and sometimes 
by staircases. 

The first thing we had to do was to plunge down a flight of ruined 
steps, to a perpendicular depth of 24 feet. This entrance was closed 
up by masonry when Belzoni was brought to the spot. This staircase 
landed us in a passage where the walls were covered with inscriptions 



♦ Diodorus, I. 51. 



t Herod. II. 123. 



TOMB OF OSIREI. 



181 



about Osirei; probably a copy of the eulogy and prayers read at his 
funeral; as such a record was often inscribed near the entrance of a 
tomb. — Next comes another staircase, on the walls of which are paint- 
ed figures of genii which cannot be the Assessors, because they are not 
forty-two; but thirty-seven on the one wall, and thirty-nine on the 
other. They are very grotesque ; and one longs to know what they 
mean. It is strange, and exceedingly agreeable, to feel that this long- 
ing has more hope in it as the centuries pass. It appeared, a while 
ago, to all eyes as it appears now to many, that Time buries the sources 
of our knowledge as he goes, choking them up with his inexhaustible 
sands, and making a dreary desert of the past. But what do we see 
next? Here comes Speculation, on her tentative march, her divining 
rod in hand, indicating to her follower, laborious Science, where and 
how to work; and lo! out oozes the stream again, — scanty and thick 
enough at first, but sure to run fuller and clearer every day. See how 
improved our prospects of Egyptian knowledge are since the days 
when our Cceur de Lion was besieging Acre ! At that time, about 1 190, 
the learned physician of Bagdad, Abdallatif, was lecturing at Cairo. In 
the excellent account of the Egypt of his day which he has left us, he 
says, speaking of the Pyramids and other monuments which were be- 
fore his eyes, "these blocks are completely covered with writing in 
that ancient character, the import of which is wholly unknown at this 
day. I have not met with any person, in all Egypt, who could say- 
that he knew, even by hearsay, of any one who understood this cha- 
racter." "Near these Pyramids, the remains of gigantic old edifices, 
and a great number of solidly constructed tombs are to be seen; and it 
is rare to meet with any portion of these ruins which is not covered 
with inscriptions in that ancient character which is wholly unknown at 
this day."* How delightful it must be to any Champollion, Rosellini, 
Wilkinson or Lepsius of our century to read this passage! And how 
encouraging it is to some of us who, by their labors, have looked with 
some degree of intelligence upon the monumental records of Egypt, to 
think that a future generation will probably see much more than we 
do; — perhaps understanding the genii, and the other mysteries of this 
tomb, nearly as well as if they had Pythagoras, or some more plain- 
spoken old priest, for a guide. 

No part of the illustrations of this tomb is more mysterious than 
those of the second passage. Kneph, "the Spirit of the Supreme, 
which moves upon the face of the waters, "t has naturally a boat for 
one of his emblems: the serpent is another. Phthah, his colleague in 
the work of creation, is the patron of the occupant of this tomb; and 
their symbols abound. In this second passage we find the boats of 
Kneph: and a curious series of descending planes, each with a door 
upon it, which is supposed to figure the descent to Hades; — the Amenti, 
or western region of the dead. We meet the serpent here in the shape 
of the bier, which elsewhere is almost invariably lion-shaped. Here, 

* Relation de TEgypte, par Abdallatif, Livre I., Ch. IV. 
t Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, IV. 236. 



182 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the serpent has lion's paws, mstead of human feet, as usual. The 
"justifying" goddess stands at the lower end of the descent. 

We next come to a small chamber which almost any one but Belzoni 
would have taken to be the extremity of the excavation. Its walls 
were all painted, and it had every appearance of completeness : and a 
deep pit in face of the entrance passage would have been concluded to 
be the place of burial. This pit, however, was a well: and it was dug 
there to draw off the waters which would otherwise injure, and which 
since have injured, the interior chambers. Belzoni filled up this pit; 
not knowing its purpose. He spied a hole in the wall, and, striking it, 
found it sounded hollow. He and his companions brought a palm 
trunk to bear on it, and battered it down; finding immediately that the 
best part of this wonderful tunnel was before them. 

In the chamber to which the pit belongs, the King Osirei is seen 
making offerings to Osiris, and to some less conspicuous deities. It is 
in this chamber that an immeasurable serpent of considerable thickness, 
winds round the walls in a curious and rather elegant involution: and 
I think it is in the next that a serpent bier extends continuously round 
nearly half the walls, bearing a series of prostrate mummies. In ano- 
ther place, instead of mummies, the serpent supports human heads, — 
the headless bodies in some cases remaining near, and in other cases, 
being absent. The strangest use I saw made of the serpent in any old 
monument was here, where it was double-headed, and wore the crowns 
of the two Egypts, — Upper and Lower, — and had two pairs of human 
legs, walking opposite ways, — a dove being perched in the bend of its 
body. Sometimes the serpent is winged; and two, uniting their necks 
to support a disk, wonderfully resembled a caduceus. — In one instance, 
where an enormous serpent is carried by the gods, Champollion says 
it is the great Apophis, enemy of the sun, who is overcome and carried 
away captive; a suggestion which the Greeks were not slow to adopt. 
And it is impossible to look upon these representations of the serpent; 
of the tree of life, of which those who ate were made as gods; of the 
moving spirit of the Creator, and of the universally prevalent ideas of 
the original spread of water; the separation of the land from the water; 
the springing of vegetation, and the sudden appearance of animals on 
the new surface; and the separation of the upper air into regions of 
abode, without seeing whence was derived the first of the two accounts 
of the creation given in the Book of Genesis ;* — that in which, not 
Jehovah, but the Elohim were engaged, who would be understood by 
the Egyptian instructors of Moses to be Kneph and Phthah ; — the 
Presiding Spirit, and the Forming Intellect of the Supreme. The other, 
and very different, account! has little that is Egyptian in its character, 
and was probably not learned at Heliopolis or Thebes. 

In the hall through the first chamber is the curious gi-oup of four 
kinds of people (four of each) which has excited so much speculation, 
but which Champollion believed that he understood plainly enough. 
Ra, the Sun, stands behind the sixteen figures, who are not captives, 



• Genesis, L; II. 1, 2, 3. 



f Genesis, II. 4—25. 



TOMB OF OSIREI. 



183 



but dwellers under the sun — inhabitants of the earth. The general le- 
gend declares them to be " the inhabitants of Egypt, and those of foreign 
countries." Four are red, the Egyptian conventional complexion; and 
their special legend is " the race of men; " which savors of the conceit of 
primitive patriotism. The next four have primrose-colored skins, and 
are called "Namou," — ("Asiatics.") The third set are altogether ne- 
gro, in complexion and feature ; and they are called "Nahasi," — 
("Africans.") The fourth group are pale yellow again, and blue-eyed, 
and dressed in barbaric fashion, with feathers in their hair, but with long 
flowing robes. These are inscribed "Tamhou," which Champol- 
lion believed to designate a northern people, and probably Europeans.* 
The rest of this hall is chiefly occupied by the reception of the departed 
king by the gods. 

Next we come to an unfinished chamber, where the drawings are 
made for sculptures which have never been wrought. Here are the 
bold and free outlines which we cannot but admire now ; outlines which 
were corrected where faulty by the master hand with its red chalk pencil, 
coming after the pupil with his black one. In one figure the arm was 
made too long ; and the rectification by the master — the red outline over 
the black, stands as light, fresh, and no doubt eff"aceable, as in the hour 
when it was made, — before the Great Ramases was born, or in his 
childhood. 

Then comes another staircase, and then more passages, with their 
ceremonial paintings : and, at length, the great hall — which yet is not 
the most interesting of these chambers of the grave. The most remark- 
able thing in it that meets the eye is the pjcture of the states through 
which the soul has to pass, after leaving the lower hemisphere, and enter- 
ing upon the abodes of the sun. Of these abodes there are twelve, each 
shown by a door valve, disclosing a mummy, and guarded by a serpent. 
Each serpent has a name ; and all have the legend,! " It dwells above this 
great door, and opens it to the god Sun." One beautiful illustration is 
of the connection of the deceased with time. The mummy stands with 
a chain round his neck, which is held by a procession of twenty-four 
figures, each with a star over its head. These are the Hours; and in 
another tomb I saw the same company, telling the season of the year 
by their appearance ; those betokening the night being dark, and stand- 
ing near together ; those betokening the day being lighter, and further 
apart. If Champollion reads the legends of these spheres and spirits 
in the tombs aright, we have some light as to the expectations of these 
ancient worshipers. He translates thus, about the inhabitants of two 
series of abodes: "These hostile souls see not our god when he casts 
the rays from his disk : they no longer dwell in the terrestrial world ; 
and they hear not the voice of the great god when he traverses their 
zones." " These have found grace in the eyes of the great god. They 
dwell in the abodes of glory ; those in which the heavenly life is led. 
The bodies which they have abandoned will repose for ever in their 
tombs, while they will enjoy the presence of the Supreme God.":]: 



Champollion's Lettres sur I'Egypte. 



t Ibid. 



X Ibid. 



184 



EASTERN LIFE. 



In the side chambers are devices yet waiting- for their interpretation : 
— flames, heads and headless bodies, men bound, or standing feet upper- 
most, or lying on their backs — or with their heads just leaving their 
shoulders ; with the scarabaeus in the boat, and other animal symbols 
which show that these are not, as some have hastily supposed, human 
sacrifices, (which did not make a part of Egyptian worship,) but were 
probably a symbolical representation of the process of initiation into 
the priestly mysteries. 

The sarcophagus chamber is wonderfully fine. After exploring it as 
well as we could with the lights we carried — picking out the devices on 
the walls, but discerning nothing of the vaulted ceiling at the end where 
the sarcophagus stood, we enjoyed seeing the whole lighted up by a fire 
of straw. I never shall forget that gorgeous chamber in this palace of 
death. The rich colors on the wall, (especially the profusion of deep 
red,) were brought out by the flame ; and the wonderful ceiling whose 
black vault was all starred with emblems, and peopled with lines of 
yellow figures — countless, in two vast regiments — this was like nothing 
earthly. And it is like nothing on the earth. These starry emblems 
are what has been called the Zodiac. I should not have discovered or 
supposed them to bear that meaning: but Champollion, who knew 
more than anybody else about such things, offers his readings of old 
Egyptian almanacks — quoting the testimony of Diodorus about " the 
gilded circle of Osymandyas, which gave the hours of the rising of the 
constellations, with the influences of each." Champollion gives us 
some of these influences : — as, " Orion influences the left ear. 1st 
hour: Orion influences the left arm. 2d hour : Sirius influences the 
heart," and so on.* Payne Knight sayst that Astrology is not ex- 
pressly mentioned among the pursuits of the ancient Egyptians ; but 
that their creed certainly admitted the principle on which it is founded ; 
— that is, necessity — a derivation of all destinies from the original im- 
pulse given by an immutable Creator. 

Beyond the sarcophagus chamber, the excavation still descends, by 
staircases and passages, till the mass of earth, fallen from above, bars 
further progress. 

Such are the places where, as Isaiah says, " the Kings of the nations, 
even all of them, lie in glory, each in his own house," (Is. xiv. 18,) 
and such are the regions supposed by him to be moved at the approach 
of the tyrant, and to stir up their dead to meet him who has become 
as weak as they, and must now be brother of the worm, and be brought 
down to Hades, to the sides of the pit. — From Egypt, this method of 
burial spread far over the east; and the caverns of the hills contained 
the successive generations of many people, besides t)ie Hebrews, ^vho 
had, in their civilization, followed the ideas and methods of Egypt. 
Happily for the hnman race, the ideas spread with the forms. After 
the example of Egypt, men preserved, amidst more or less corruption, 
the belief in One Supreme God; in a Divine Moral Government; in a 

* Lettres sur rE£r}qote. 

■f" Payne Knight's - Inquiry into the SymboUcal Language," &c. 



TOMBS. 



185 



future life and retribution; and in the greatest of all truths, that moral 
good is the highest good, and moral evil the deepest evil. From the 
lips of this thoughtful people it was that infant nations learned, through 
a long course of centuries, whatever they held that was most noble, 
concerning the origin and tendencies of things, and what was most to 
be desired for the race of man at large, and the soul of every individual 
man. Many things remained to be learned; and many needed to be 
unlearned. We find much that was barbaric, coarse, ignorant, and 
untrue : but the wonder is at the amount of insight, achievement and 
truth. The ground gained by the human mind was never lost; for out 
of this Valley of the Nile issued Judaism: and out of Judaism issued, 
in due time, Christianity. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THEBES.— TOMBS.— MUMMIES.— MEDEENET HABOO.— DAYR EL 
BAHREE.— EL-KARNAC. 

We passed the working hours of several days among the tombs ; 
and my journal has copious accounts of them: but, remembering how 
much sooner one wearies of reading of such places than of seeing them, 
I will say little about them. 

One of the most celebrated is the Harpers' Tomb, first mentioned 
by Bruce, and, therefore, often called by his name. This is the work 
of two of the Ramases: and a vast work it is, — extending 405 feet into 
the hill. The entrance passages have small chambers on either hand, 
whose walls present us with capital pictures of ancient Egyptian life. 
The kitchen comes first, — on the left hand side: and there the servants 
are kneading bread, and carrying to the oven cakes sprinkled with 
black seeds : and others are making broth, and pastry ; and some are 
drawing off liquor with a syphon ; and others slaughtering cattle, and 
preparing the joints for the cook. Some of the beef is to be boiled, — 
the joints being put into caldrons over the fire : and an assistant is 
pounding something in a mortar ; and there is a meat-safe, suspended 
from the ceiling. — The other chambers have boats, furniture, arms, 
gardens and a fish-pond; fowls, fields and their produce; and so forth. 
The standards are striking. They bear the hawk, the fox, the ibis, 
&c. The blade part of the arms is painted blue, which seems to show 
that they were of steel. — The furniture is so elegant, — the couches, 
fauteuils, hangings, vases, baskets and lamps, — that it could hardly be 
surpassed in Greece or Rome at any time, or in Paris and London 
now. It is very strange to look upon these evidences of in-door 
luxury, and then to turn to the pictures of savage warfare on the pro- 
pyla of the palaces. And yet it is only what one knows to be hap- 
pening even now, within the limits of Christendom. No luxury on 
earth can exceed that of many houses in New York: and at this mo- 
ment, while some ladies are passing their days in the midst of it, their 



186 



EASTERN LIFE. 



husbands are shooting down the Mexicans with a hatred as cordial as 
any Ramases ever feU for his southern or eastern foes. And if we 
ourselves have not outgrown warfare, (and it is too soon to declare 
that we have,) we may present the same humiliating spectacle to the 
antiquarians of a future age. Our warfare will not be so savage as 
that of these old heathens ; but it will be far more shameful, inasmuch 
as we call ourselves Christians. 

Among the figures in this tomb are two harpers playing before the 
god Ao, or Hercules. They are clothed in white garments, striped 
with red: and their harps have each ten strings. Some preceding tra- 
velers have declared these harpers to be blind ; but there is now too 
much defacement about the heads to permit this to be seen. 

The most striking device I observed in this tomb (unless indeed it 
be the piggish soul returning to earth in charge of the monkeys), was 
one which related to the death of the occupant of the tomb. The 
funereal boat is drawn by men who are at a loss about passing the 
bridge before them. The steep, angular bridge intercepts the rope ; 
but the scarabaeus stoops to help. By its hind legs it hangs to the 
heaven; while, with its foreclaws it pulls up the rope, allowing the 
hearse to pass. In this position the scarabaeus signifies the resur- 
rection. 

Each of the small apartments having a closed pit. Sir G. Wilkinson 
supposes* that each was the burial-place of that officer of the royal 
household whose function is illustrated on the walls : — as the cook, the 
armor-bearer, the gardener, &;c. This appears very probable. 

In the tomb of the Pharaoh who reigned (it is thought) in right of 
his wife Taosiri, there is a vaulted chamber in which we could only 
grope till our dragoman lighted a fire of straw. Its blaze showed us a 
most striking device, representing the king in his former and present 
state of being. In the upper hemisphere is the sun, and a living man. 
Then there is the scarabagus, head downwards, representing, as before, 
the resurrection or immortality Vv^hich connects the two lives of earth 
and heaven. Beneath is the moon, above the funereal altar, where Isis 
attends with her protecting wings, and mourners are ranged, — the whole 
group being inclosed by a half-circle of human-headed birds. 

The tomb of Osirei II. is remarkable for being in great part unfin- 
ished, though begun with great care and pains. This condition is at 
once a proof and a consequence of the shortness of his reign. This 
tomb is remarkably clear and bright looking ; but the figures become 
barer and barer as we proceed, — one sort of lines of illustration after 
another failing, till we come to blank walls. The sarcophagus cham- 
ber is quite rough and rude : but the sculptured figure of the king on 
the lid of the sarcophao-us is fine, — being in relief to the height of nine 
inches. 

The priests took care to preserve their grandeur and rank after death. 
Their tombs are found where the rock is of the most compact quality, 
fit to bear extensive excavations, while inferior people must find a place 



• Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 209. 



TOMBS. 



187 



where there is more danger of the soil crumbling. We went as far as 
heat and bats would let us in a priestly tomb which occupies an acre 
and a quarter of the heart of the rock. The great man who occupied 
it left other tokens of his wealth ; but none could be more striking than 
this. There is an extraordinary array of niches, pillars and pits : but 
the covering of almost the whole of the walls with small hieroglyphic 
writing is the crowning wonder. Will no one go and read this great 
volume of Egyptian ecclesiastical history ? 

The tomb of the Pharaoh who pursued the Hebrews to the Red Sea, 
is extremely interesting. There are five lines of tribute-bearers — black, 
red, light red, and yellow, — showing how extensive was his dominion. 
The people of "Fount" bring ivory, apes, leopards, and other tropical 
wealth. The next bring valuables of an ornamental kind which they 
declare to be " chosen offerings of the chiefs of the gentiles of Kufa."* 
Next come Ethiopians, " gentiles of the south," with African gifts of 
beasts, skins and gold. Then come the whites, — red-haired, — dressed 
in white garments with a blue border, — arms covered (Sir G. Wilkin- 
son saw gloves, but I did not), and bringing, among other offerings, a 
bear. These must be northern people, surely ; — and at the time of the 
Exodus! Their wives follow with the other women who are collected 
in the rear; and they are dressed in long gowns which have three 
flounces. If our upholsterers might study in these tombs, so, it ap- 
pears, might our dress-makers. 

This is the tomb which exhibits to us the Egyptian trades, which it 
is so interesting to understand. When one looks at the brick-making, 
one thinks of the Hebrews who were just effecting their escape from 
that employment. I will abstain from details which may be found 
fully given elsewhere, mentioning only, as curious, the bellows, the in- 
laying or joining of wood of different colors with glue, the stone-cut- 
ting; and, above all, the carving of the Sphinx, and of two colossal 
statues, which some suppose to be the Vocal Statue, and the Karnac 
Colossus. The men are at work on stages, chipping away at the 
mighty monster, the Sphinx, which here looks as calm and cheerful as 
afterwards in its own person, among the sands. Such of these tombs 
as are simple tunnels are airy and lofty. The roof of this one rises 
towards the inner end, — no one knows why ; for the effect is not good 
in any way. In the sporting tomb we see how the Egyptians excelled 
in the painting of animals. The animation of action here, and generally 
where brutes are presented, shows that the stiffness and monotony of 
their human images were from choice, and not from incapacity for 
other methods. The animation of their warrior figures indeed shows 
the same thing. 

We visited, of course, the tombs of the Queens, and explored two, as 
far as decay and the blackening of the walls would permit. The do- 
minions of these ancient ladies were indicated by masses of red and 
yellow rock, with large black birds perched upon them. The com- 
plexions are somewhat strange and perplexing. The yellow prevails, 

* Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 235. 



188 



EASTERN LIFE. 



it being the sign of feminine subjects ; but we find pink and blue faces 
also. The blue is probably appropriated, as elsewhere, to individuals 
of the priestly caste. Emblematical animals abound here, and a row 
of apes, not bareheaded, was so astonishingly like a set of Christian 
judges as to send us into a fit of most profane laughter. These queenly 
tombs are in a desolate mountain hollow, with rocks towering over- 
head : — a fit place for hiding away the pomps and vanities of the world. 

We much enjoyed exploring two recently opened tombs; — one dis- 
covered about five years ago ; the other only a few months before ; and 
by Lepsius. Of the first of these we thought highly, — not only from 
the good execution of the animals, and the fine efi'ect of a phalanx of men, 
but because the faces of homage and supplication were admirably given. 
The colors were very gay, where not spoiled by smoke. The gayest 
of all was the tomb opened by Lepsius. No picture in this year's ex-, 
hibition could be brighter. And the stucco was smooth, and the out- 
lines clear as on the day when it was closed. The figures were all 
women, I believe, in flowing garments of white striped with red. As 
for the finish of the painting, I observed an ibis which, while duly spi- 
rited as a whole, had every feather separately painted, in light gray 
outlines upon dark gray ground. This was more like a daguerreotype 
picture than any other work of art I ever saw. 

After visiting so many repositories of the dead where every resource 
had been used to make them secure, and ample and sumptuous, it was 
strange to pass by spots where the common people of those old days 
were laid away. It was a doctrine of this ancient nation that all 
Egyptians were noble: and they applied this so far as to consider every 
one who was virtuous enough entitled to cross the dark water, and to 
be laid in the sacred soil of the death region ; just as we declare that 
all men are equal in the presence of God, — that he has no respect of 
persons, and that in his field, the rich and poor lie down together. But 
as, with us, the rites of a pauper funeral differ from those of a princely 
one ; as in the United States, the dark-skinned children of God are laid 
apart from the whites, so here in this metropolis of heathendom, did 
human weakness come in to mock the profession which human reason 
had made. Not far from the royal valley of death are pits — hardly to 
be called catacombs, where undistinguished mummies were laid. One 
day, our attendants, always on the watch for treasure of one sort or 
another, saw something which induced them to poke and dig ; and 
next ensued the extraordinary sight of disinterring mummies. These 
bodies had probably been searched before for valuables; but they had 
been buried away with some care, and probably for a long time ; for it 
was no easy matter to disengage them from the soil. We pardy un- 
rolled two: and even ventured upon removing the bituminous mask 
which covered the face, which came away, bearing the impression of 
not uncomely features. 

While we were fingering the curly brown hair of one of these mum- 
mies, our dragoman cooly wrenched off the head, the throat giving way 
like a fold of rotten leather. I never remember so strange a sensation 
as in seeing this ; but the thing was done before we could stop it. — 



MUMMIES. 



189 



People on the spot have no notion of reverence for these remains. 
Travelers who were at Thebes in 1827 tell us how all the fires wanted 
by themselves and their attendants were made of the sycamore wood 
of the mummy-cases. Abdallatif"^ tells us how, in his time (the 12th 
century) the country people stripped the mummies of whatever was of 
substance sufficient to make garments ; and sold the rags of the mum- 
my cloth to the paper-makers, to make paper for the use of the grocers. 
He speaks of some of the sycamore wood being then rotten ; but some 
sound, and fit for use. — One extraordinary variety of burial he tells us 
of, on the word of one on whom he could rely. This friend of his 
was once searching for treasure with some companions, in the tombs 
at Geezeh, when they came upon a jar carefully sealed. They opened 
it, found it contained honey, and began to eat. Presently one of 
the party perceived a hair sticking to his finger. Drawing it out, he 
found it belonged to the body of an infant which was preserved in the 
honey. The body was in good condition, and adorned with jewels 
and rich ornaments. 

What care to preserve the earthy frame ! and with what a result ! 
The three thousand years of purgatory of many of these Theban 
sleepers is now about expiring. If their faith was a true one, and they 
are now returning to resume their bodies, and begin a new cycle, in 
what a state will they find their sumptuous death-chambers, and their 
hundred-gated metropolis! Their skulls, stained with bitumen, and 
indented with the creases of the bandages, are carried away ; one to 
Russia, another to America; one is in a royal palace — another in a 
Mechanics' Museum: — their coffins are burnt to make an English 
lady's tea ; their cere-cloths are made into paper to wrap up an Arab's 
tobacco. The spices and unguents were taken from their brains and 
chests hundreds of years ago, to be melted down, and serve for some 
other perfuming and embalming. — These things may appear less grave 
and pathetic at home than on the spot: for mummies are little more 
respected in Europe than by the ignorant Arabs who pull them up and 
to pieces, for sale and use. Something is perhaps owing to the name; 
and something to the dollish oddity of their appearance; but, in its 
proper place, there is great dignity about a mummy. Reposing in its 
recess or painted chamber, and bearing the marks of allegiance to Osi- 
ris, and of acceptance by him, there is something as solemn in its as- 
pect as in that of any coffin in an English vault: and this solemnity is 
not lessened by the thought that in that still breast and sleeping head 
beat the heart, and wrought the ideas of three thousand years ago. 
This black pall of oblivion hanging over all gives one, though a mere 
stranger, something of the mourner feeling which is one of the privi- 
leges of the speculative, when bringing speculation to bear on the ob- 
literated past, instead of the unrevealed future. 

We had an opportunity of seeing how different is the interment of 
the present inhabitants of the country from that of the old. Of old, 
seventy-two days intervened between the death and the burial. Here 



* Abdallatif. Relation de I'Egypte, Livre I. Ch. IV 



190 



EASTERN LIFE. 



it was hardly more minutes. A woman in the village near our boat 
died at one o'clock; and before five, we met the funeral procession. 
The howl here answers perhaps to the throwing dust on the head, 
that we see in the sculptures. Both appear painfully barbarous, as 
all strong outward expressions of grief must ever be.— -We learned 
that, wood being scarce, there was no coffin; but that the woman was 
buried in new clothes ; and that stones would be laid over the grave, 
so as to secure it perfectly. 

On the 23d, we went to Medeenet Haboo, including the great pa- 
lace temple of Ramases III., and some older buildings, which I will 
deny myself the pleasure of dwelling on. I must speak presently of 
Karnac, which is still grander ; and 1 cannot hope that my readers can 
enter much into the feelings with which Egyptian travelers regard these 
vast monuments. I find in my journal this remark, which here occurs : 
•— " it is difiicult to assign the grounds of the knowledge one gains in 
these places of the people who lived in them: but it really amounts to 
much." I must remember that it is difficult to assign the grounds of 
knowledge, and to convey the impressions received of the living and 
moving existence of these people, and not carry my readers through 
too many of those scenes which can be vivified only by the inhabiting 
spirit of the spot. I will mention only two or three peculiarities of 
this pile of edifices. 

On the wall of the Pavilion of Ramases, we see him among his 
attendant ladies. He is seated ; they are standing. Some are offering 
flowers ; others waving fans ; and one is his partner at that game re- 
sembling draughts which is painted on older walls than these ; — in the 
caves at Benee Hasan. There is a board with pieces resembling pins 
or pegs ; and the lady's hand is on one which she is about to move. 

In another place, we have the coronation ; a very grand affair. The 
king is on his canopied throne or shrine, which is borne by twelve 
princes, his sons. A great procession follows, of princes, priests, sol- 
diers, and various official personages. A scribe is reading from a 
scroll ; the High-priest burns incense ; and the band makes music. — 
Further on, the king presents ofierings to his god ; — and the queen 
looks on from one side. Some of the priestly order bear tlie statues 
of the king's ancestors, and a crowd of standards. The hieroglyphic 
legends tell us that the king has put on the crown of the Upper and 
Lower countries : and birds are set free, — carrier-pigeons, — to convey 
the news to the gods of the north, south, east and west. This last 
was a pretty discovery of Champollion's. Then comes a long invo- 
cation, which is written on the wall, above the figure of the reading 
priest. The king has cut six ears of corn with a sickle ; and these are 
offered to the god by a priest. — They had grand coronations in those 
days, it is clear. 

The war-pictures are very spirited ; and, in some respects, very 
barbarous. There are heaps of severed hands, which the scribes are 
numbering and noting; each heap being marked 3000. On the outer 
walls are heaps of tongues, also numbered. We are told that the rows 
of captives contain one thousand in each line. — We have, on the outer 



MEDEENET HABOO. 



191 



walls, a naval conflict, for the first time, — supposed to have taken place 
on some Asiatic inland sea, as the enemy appears to be of Asiatic race. 
The Egyptian galleys are distinguished from those of a foe by a lion's 
head at the prow. One pretty scene in this foreign country is where 
the king is attacked by lions, which he kills and puts to flight, — in a 
marsh. — We have also besieged towns, where the children are lifted in 
over the ramparts, for safety, and the besiegers fell trees in the neigh- 
boring woods. Then we have triumphs, captives, approving gods, &c., 
as in other places, but with much grandeur. — The predominant impres- 
sion on one's mind here, as in so many other monumental areas in 
Egypt, is of the interest to us now of that early stage of the human 
mind which united with its barbaric aims and pursuits such serene 
and abstract conceptions of deity, and such a subordination of the 
present life to the future. Here we have the king and all human 
bengs in intense action, in the Physical Force stage of civilization, 
while the gods remain the same imperturbable abstractions that we 
ever find them; and the preparation of the tombs is an object of even 
more interest to men than the prosecution of their wars. It is curious, 
and very instructive to see how an age appropriated to the supremacy 
of Force was no less distinguished by Faith in abstractions. 

When Thebes had so far declined as to become a mere collection 
of villages in the plain, the Christians took possession of Medeenet 
Haboo, plastering over the sculptures with mud, putting up an altar 
at the east end of the temple, introducing their little red columns and 
low roofs among the massy and gorgeous pillars of the heathen courts ; 
and even defacing the architraves to admit their rafters. Their priests 
took possession of the small apartments of the temple ; and their people 
built mud houses within the precincts. On the approach of the Arabs, 
the Christians fled to Isna ; and here lie their remains, scattered among 
the outstanding glories of an older time. — I have said how the Christian 
erections and paintings appeared to us. It may be interesting to know 
how they appeared to our predecessor in this journey, — the Bagdad 
physician who saw these places when the crusaders were warring with 
his faith in Syria. If we remember that he speaks of the Coptic Chris- 
tians of between six and seven centuries ago, we shall not be apt to 
take oflence, as at an attack on the Christianity of our country and 
our time. We do not pique ourselves on a fellowship with the Coptic 
Christians of the 12th century in their country settlements. 

Abdallatif says, after extolling the grandeur and beauty of the Egyptian 
sculptures, " The children of Israel, having been witness of the homage 
which the Egyptians rendered to these idols, of the profound veneration 
which they entertained for them, and of the zeal with which they wor- 
shiped them, became accustomed, during their long abode among this 
nation, to see these superstitious ceremonies ; and having found in Syria 
also people delivered over in the same manner to the worship of idols, 
required of Moses that he should give them such gods as these people 
had: which drew forth from Moses this reproach, You are a foolish 
nation. The greater number of Christians, being either Egyptians or 
Sabeans, have retained the propensities belonging to their origin, and 



192 



EASTERN LIFE. 



have suffered themselves to slide easily into the ancient habits of their 
forefathers : — in consequence, they have admitted images into their 
churches, and into the temples appropriated to the exercise of their 
worship. They have even pushed matters to an extreme : they have 
in many ways improved upon the existing abuses of this custom, and 
have carried their folly so far as to pretend to represent the god whom 
they adore surrounded by angels. All this was merely a remnant of 
the customs of their ancestors which had been preserved among them; 
with this difference, however : that their ancestors, far from representing 
the deity under any form, had too exalted an idea of him to imagine 
that He could be apprehended by the sense, or comprehended by the 
understanding. That which has drawn the Christians into these ex- 
cesses, and which has emboldened them to adopt such a custom, is 
the dogma which they profess of the divinity of a creature. — All this," 
the sober Mohammedan goes on to say, " we have discussed with care 
in the treatise which we have composed against the Christians."* — No 
enlightened person, of any faith, could help sympathizing with Abdallatif 
w^hile in sight of the profane daubs which the Christians have left among 
the sculptures, and which seem put there to give every advantage to the 
old heathens. They have something of the effect of the ritual of the 
Greek church, which makes our most religious countrymen feel, in 
Asia Minor, that theyhad rather, in case of need, turn Mohammedan 
than enter it. 

Near Medeenet Haboo is an expanse of sunk soil, with alluvial deposits 
round its edges, which Sir G. Vv'ilkinson believes to have contained the 
Lake of the Dead, over which the body must be ferried to its tomb.t 

Passing over the other edifices on the western bank, I will mention 
only that on the last day of our abode on this side, we visited the very 
old temple called Dayr el Bahree, or "the Northern Convent;" so 
called from its having been appropriated by the Christians for a church 
and monastery. It is gloriously situated; in the great central perpen- 
dicular rock; — excavated in the mountain itself ; and once approached 
by an ascending dromos of great length, and between rows of sphinxes, 
with pylons and obelisks at intervals, and a succession of terraces at 
last. This temple is quite unlike any other ; and few are more im- 
pressive. The crude brick arches of ancient date which are found in 
many places prove that the Egyptians were acquainted with the princi- 
ple of the arch ; yet here the vaulted chambers showed roofs composed 
of courses of stone, laid on flat, and hollowed into an arch afterwards. 
Some bits of walls and curious corners had been recently laid open to 
view, — their paintings as vivid as ever. On one wall from which the 
sand had been shoveled away, we found a splendid lotus plant, on 
which was a nest of water birds, bending the budded stem which sup- 
ported it. A rabbit had attacked the young birds : a dog was attacking 
the rabbit, and an ibis the dog. On another part of the plant were a 
lizard and two yellow butterflies: and two human hands were plucking 
blossoms. 

• Abdallatif. Relation de 1' Egypte, Livre I. Ch. IV. 
t Wilkinson's Modern Egypt and Thebes, II. 187. 



EL-KARNAC. 



193 



This was, as I said, ou^ last day on the western shore. Our guides 
knew this ; and I fancied that my open-faced and obliging donkey-boy 
felt sorry to part ; as I truly did. There could be no exchange of senti- 
ment, however ; for the only language we had in common consisted of 
two words, which we found enough to signify our pleasure by, and that 
was all. "Bono" and "non bono" was our whole discourse. But 
my guide's face and close service on this last day seemed to say more. 
He understood my wish to go once more to the Ramaseum, and look about 
me when there ; — to go once more to the Colossi, and ride round them 
once and again. He put my donkey to its best canter, that I might ac- 
complish all this. I turned a grateful face upon him, and said " Bono :" 
and his answer was, with a wise nod, and holding out his hand, "La, 
la, — bono baksheesh ! " He little knew how he had spoiled everything 
by that one word, — what I might have given him, in cash and character, 
but for that act of begging at such a moment. 

We crossed to the El-Uksur side in the dusk of the evening, and 
looked forward to spending the next two days in the most magnificent 
spot in Egypt — among the ruins of El-Karnac. 

The 25th was cloudy; — our first cloudy day in Africa. I was sur- 
prised to see how the whole landscape, and especially the ruins, suffered 
by the absence of light, shadow and vivid tint. It was very well to 
become av/are of this ; but one would rather it had happened elsewhere. 
"We had planned to ride over in the evening, to see El-Karnac by moon- 
light ; but in the evening, the whole sky was gray. We had not, all 
this day, one single gleam from sun or moon. We had made such a 
survey of the ruins, however, as prepared us for a thorough exploring 
the next day. 

On the 26th, the sky was still dull when I looked out ; but as I was 
taking my early walk on the shore, some lustrous gleams touched upon 
the points of the western mountains, and at length illumined the whole 
shore, and stole over the river towards us. Before breakfast, we visited 
first a stuffed crocodile which was offered for sale. It was a hideous 
creature ; but I was glad to have an opportunity for a safe study of it. 
Then we went down to our old kandjia of the cataracts, which had just 
arrived with a cargo of slaves for Ibraheem Pasha's hareem. The girls 
looked as earnest and content as they always do while making cakes, 
Nubian fashion : but the officer who had charge of them and the boys 
carried a little whip. 

After breakfast, we rode away to El-Karnac, the sun coming out, but 
the wind rising so as to cover us with dust, and render the examination 
of the external sculptures less easy than we could have wished. 

The road from El-Uksur to El-Karnac once lay, as everybody knows, 
between sphinxes, standing six feet apart, for a mile and a half. Those 
which remain, headless, encumbered, and extending only a quarter of 
a mile, are still very imposing. Then come pylons, propyla, halls, 
obelisks, temples, groves of columns, and masses of ruins, oppressive to 
see, and much more to remember. I think I must say nothing about 
them. They must be sacred to the eyes that see them ; I mean, incapa- 
ble to be communicated to any others. Those that have not seen iSl- 
13 



194 EASTERN LIFE. 

Karnac know nearly as much as can be told when they remember that 
here are the largest buildings, and the most extensive ruins in the known 
world: and that the great hall is 329 feet by 170, and 85 feet high, 
containing 134 columns, the 12 central ones of which are 12 feet in 
diameter, and the others not much smaller; the whole of this forest of 
columns being gay with colors, and studded with sculptures. Of this 
hall the central roof is gone, and part of the lateral covering. The 
columns are falHng, and at an accelerated rate. There is saltpetre in 
the stone; and the occasional damps from the ground cause the corro- 
sion of these mighty masses near the bases. They fall, one by one ; 
and these leaning wrecks, propped up by some accident which must 
give way, have a very mournful aspect. We cannot but look forward 
to the successive fall of these incomparable pillars, as to that of the trees 
of a forest undermined by springs. These will sink under a waste of 
sand, as those into the swamp, to be perhaps found again after thou- 
sands of years, and traced out curiously, — a fossil forest of the mind. 

Nothing was more striking to us than the evidences of the earthquake, 
to which, and not only to Cambyses and Ptolemy Lathyrus, we attri- 
bute the overthrow of gigantic columns in the area, colossal statues, and 
mountainous masses of the propyla. If, perplexed by the magnitude 
of Egyptian achievement altogether, we give up the point whether 
means existed for the overthrow of such masses, there still remains the 
question how huge columns could fall straight, so as to be shattered in 
regular order, by any means but such a shaking of the earth as art can- 
not be conceived to produce. 

One curious incident I must mention. A stone has fallen out, in 
more than one place, from the wall of the old Pharaonic propyla ; and 
looking in at the holes, I saw sculptured and painted blocks, built into 
the interior; — remnants of a still earlier time, used as material. These 
propyla were standing before Moses was born. The great hall was 
built by Osirei, the occupant of the magnificent tomb I have described. 
But the original buildings of El-Karnac are of a date beyond our ken. 
The earliest portions now remaining are a hundred years older than 
any other edifices in Thebes. — I have before mentioned that the only 
known allusion to the Jews in the monuments of Egypt is on the walls 
of El-Karnac. The conqueror Sheshonk (Shishak) holds by the hair 
a group of captives, whose race is determined, not only by the face, but 
by the cities of Judah being named among the array of tributaries. 

The finest view I obtained of the El-Karnac ruins was from a mound 
just above the lake. To the left lay the blue lake, — a sheet of still 
water, fed by the Nile through the soil, but too salt now for use. Re- 
mains of quays and baths made this look as ancient and forlorn as any 
other part. To the right lay the somewhat dreary plain which extends 
between the ruins and the river. Before me, filling a circuit of a mile 
and a half, lay the ruins; obelisks peeping over roofless temples; 
statues seen through rows of columns; pylons standing firm like out- 
posts, while within there is now nothing but wreck to guard : and all 
around, wherever we could look or set foot, were mute mourners over 



EL-KARNAC. 



195 



the desolations of time, — shattered inscriptions, defaced pictures, use- 
less blocks, and unintelligible fragments. 

The finest view I obtained from the ruins was from the top of the 
mound heaped up against the face of the propyla which front the river. 
Here I could command the plain of tufty coarse grass, strewn with 
stone, and varied with palm-clumps : and the remains of the avenue of 
smaller sphinxes, which used to extend to the landing-place on this 
side ; then the platform above the quay : then the river ; and beyond it 
the western plain, with its precipitous mountain boundary, now drest 
in rainbow hues. The temple at El-Kurneh was hidden by a palm- 
clump : but the Ramaseum, with its wrecked propyla, stood out distinct: 
and the recess of the Dayr el Bahree was traceable; and the group at 
Medeenet Haboo; and, best of all, the Pair were sitting in the bright 
sunlight, above, because far beyond, the dark screen of palm groves 
which hid the modern village. This was my last view of them ; and 
in my parting yearning, I thought it the best. How inexplicable is the 
distinctness with which some images impress themselves upon the 
memorial faculty! I did not see them more distinctly in that African 
sunshine than 1 see them now. 

The finest impression, or the most memorable, which we obtained 
of El-Karnac was derived from our moonlight visit, that last evening. 
There is no questioning of any style of art, if only massive, Avhen its 
results are seen by moonlight. Then, spaces and distances become 
what the mind desiderates ; and drawbacks are lost in shade. Here, 
the mournful piles of fragments were turned into masses of shade ; and 
the barbaric coloring disappeared. Some capricious, but exquisite 
lights were let in through crevices in the roof and walls of the side 
chambers. Then, there were the falling columns and their shadows in 
the great hall, and the long vistas ending in ruins ; and the profound 
silence in this shadowy place, striking upon the heart. In the depth 
of this stillness, whan no one moved or spoke, the shadow of an eagle 
on the wing above fell upon the moonlit aisle, and skimmed its whole 
length. 

It was with heavy hearts, and little inclination to speak that we 
turned, on our way home, to take a last view of the pylons of Karnac. 
The moonlit plain lay, with the river in its midst, within the girdle of 
mountains. Here was enthroned the human intellect when humanity 
was elsewhere scarcely emerging from chaos. And how was it now ? 
That morning, 1 had seen the Governor of Thebes, crouching on his 
haunches on the filthy shore among the dung heaps, feeding himself 
with his fingers, among a circle of apish creatures like himself. 

The next morning, I was glad we were off. I had had as much as, 
without more knowledge, 1 could well bear : and it was a delightful 
holiday to be sitting on deck, reading, and looking at shadoofs and 
mountains, and wheat and lupins, as we did a month ago. 



196 



EASTERN LIFE. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MANUFACTURES AT KEXNEH.— MANNERS OF THE CREW.— EXCUR- 
SION TO ABYDUS. 

We escaped the dreaded dining with the old consul at Kenneh. He 
invited us, when the gentlemen called for their letters ; but they pleaded 
business. The old gentleman then begged our empty bottles of our 
dragoman, and was made quite happy by them. The cotton manufac- 
tory at Kenneh appeared to the gentlemen better than that at Isna, 
which certainly struck me as the poorest attempt at a manufacture I 
had ever seen. The machinery there was English, but kept in bad 
order. It was worked by horse power; and the horses were in poor 
phght. The thread produced was uneven, and the woven fabric there- 
fore of indifferent quality, from so much of the machinery being worked 
by hand. One might say that this was as much as could be expected 
from a factory on the other side of Thebes: but then, what beautiful 
fabrics the old Thebans wore! and of their own manufacture. And 
what luxuries they brought into their homes, by exporting their woolen 
and cotton goods ! — At this Kenneh factory, five hundred people were 
employed, at wages varying, according to their qualifications, from 100 
piastres (1/.) per month, with food, to 50 and 30 piastres. The ma- 
chinery here was superior to that at Isna; the thread more even; and 
the woven fabric therefore better. 

I have before mentioned the Kenneh pottery, and the wide demand 
for it. As much as possible is still done by hand. There is no mould 
for the inside. The jar is formed on the ancient potter's wheel ; and 
a piece of copper is used to give the external form, and to mark the 
outside with the curious scratches which adorn the Kenneh jars. Of 
course, it is a rare thing to see a jar which stands quite straight, or is 
not out of shape, one way or another. A man can make one hundred 
per day of the porous water bottles in common use. 

There is a question among students of Egyptian history about some 
military passes ; and a consequent desire to know from those who have 
been up the Nile, where the mountains approach the river so closely as 
to make it difficult for armies to pass. Of course, everything must de- 
pend upon the season. But, at the season of our voyage, I should say 
there was no part of the shore where an army could not pass on the 
one side of the river or the other: and it cannot be conceived that any 
army, native or invading, could be in the valley without means of cross- 
ing the river, which with the inhabitants has always been such a mat- 
ter of course as it is not seen to be anywhere else. At the high rock 
of Chenoboscion, and for some way on each side of it, there is only room 
for a narrow belt of tilled land, at low Nile; but on the opposite shore 
is a plain of considerable width. Generally speaking, (I might almost 
say universally,) when the hills approach on one side, they recede on 



ARAB MARRIAGES. 



197 



the other; and it is obvious that this must have been the case through 
all the changes the Nile has certainly made in its course. 

We were now about to bid farewell to the doum palm, — a tree which 
I hked in its place, — its stiffness and angularity rendering it curiously 
appropriate to the scenery in which it is found. A grove of it between 
us and the Dendara temple this day looked as well as any tall elms 
about a cathedral. 

The crocodiles abounded now when we were soon to see no more. 
Some remained asleep on the banks even after the sun had gone down. 
Near Hou, Mr. E. saw nineteen at one time on the mud banks. 

We witnessed more of the doings of the crew now that we were not 
absent on our temple-haunting all day long. The Buck did not im- 
prove in sobriety as time went on; and one morning about this date, 
he was insufferably noisy, in his elation at being dressed in a grand 
suit of new clothes; — brown burnoose, yellow slippers and a vast tur- 
ban, white as muslin can be. On Mrs. Y. complaining of the noise, 
after the Rais and dragoman had used every kind of remonstrance. 
Alee quietly went up to him, as he stood in his grandeur by the gun- 
wale, lifted him by the waist, and popped him overboard. We really 
feared that the weight of his clothes would have sunk him ; but Alee 
knew better. In two minutes I saw him standing by the gunwale 
again, high and dry, but in his ordinary blue shirt and white skullcap. 
— One of our quiet Nubians, twenty-five years of age, had already two 
wives; and by what we heard of his life at home, he might well be 
content on board the boat. As Alee observed, a rich man may put his 
wives into different apartments; but the poor man cannot: and the 
women quarrel fiercely and incessantly. This Nubian had to carry 
presents for his two wives after every voyage ; and if they were not 
precisely alike, there was no end to the wrangling. — Alee called this 
permission to have more than one wife a very bad part of his religion. 
He was not yet married at all; and he did not intend to marry till he 
should have obtained money enough by his present employment to 
enable him to settle down in a home of his own. One of my friends 
one day expressed a hope' that he would be careful in the choice of a 
wife; — so careful in assuring himself of her temper and goodness as 
not to be tempted to put her away, as husbands in Egypt do so lightly 
and cruelly. Alee did not quite promise this; but he gave an account 
of what plan he should pursue, which shows how these matters are re- 
garded by sensible young men in Egypt. He said he should buy a 
white wife, when he wanted to settle. He should tell her what he ex- 
pected of her; — viz., to be good-tempered; to make him comfortable ; 
and to take care of his " boys." If §he failed, he should, the first time, 
tell her his mind " very strongly." And then, if she got out of temper, 
or was negligent a second time, he should "just put her away." This 
was said with the gesture of Othello at the words " whistle her down 
the wind." 

The wag Ibraheem was seen to be very sulky to-day, after having 
passionately thrown some bread overboard, and spat out after it what 
was in his mouth. This was because the Rais rebuked him for his 



198 



EASTERN LIFE. 



shabbiness in eating with the poor Nubians (the Cairenes having all by 
this time quarreled) while laying by his own money for his wife, — he 
having neither parents nor children to maintain. The way in which 
this was told to us showed that the maintaining of parents was regarded 
quite as a matter of course. It is to be feared that the parents' need of 
it is too much a matter of course, in the present state of that order of 
society in Egypt. 

Of the temple of Dendara I will say nothing. The oldest names it 
bears are those of Cleopatra and her son Csesarion ; and it has not 
therefore the interest of antiquity; while its beauty is of the same kind 
as that of the Isna temple. At Dendara, as at Isna, the Pasha has 
caused the building to be cleared out ; for v:hich the world is obhged 
to him : and it would have been more so, if he had not run a mud-brick 
wall directly up against the middle of the front ; so that no complete 
view of the portico can be had from any point. However, we must 
thankfully accept any conservative aid we can obtain, and hope to re- 
move, in course of time, any blemishes as manageable as mud-brick 
walls. 

On Saturday, January 23d, we made an excursion of some import- 
ance : — to Abydus, which stood near, if not, as some scholars think, on 
the spot where This was built — This, the old capital of Upper Egypt, 
where sixteen kings reigned before Thebes was heard of. It will be 
observed that as we are coming down the river, we are ascending the 
stream of Time. Thebes, built chiefly by monarchs of the Third 
Period, appeared very ancient when we were there. We are now 
(supposing Abydus to be the site of This), carried back to the First 
Period. The only other ancient monuments now remaining for us to 
see were the Caves at Benee Hasan, whose dates are of the latter part 
of the First Period ; and the Pyramids, and the cluster of remains about 
them ; which are the very oldest of all, bearing date from the early part 
of the First Period. If we this day stood on the site of This, we were 
standing on the buried metropoHs of powerful monarchs, who flourished 
here within a few centuries of the building of the Pyramids ; — some- 
where between four and five thousand years ago. 

We left our boat at Beliane, and were to rejoin it in the evening at 
Girgeh, a few miles down the river. We rode for above two hours 
through a rich plain which bore crops of wheat, barley, lupins, vetches, 
lentils, a little flax, beans and sugar-cane. The barley was turning, in 
some places, and the beans were in blossom, and some beginning to 
pod. They grow tall, but are less strong in the stalk than with us. I 
had a good opportunity to-day of observing the supplies of water in the 
interior of the country. More than one curious point depends on 
whether the whole supply of water is derived from the river, or whether 
there are any springs whatever near the mountains. I should not have 
doubted the supply being wholly derived from the river, but from the 
decided declaration of one resident who certainly ought, from his func- 
tion, to understand the matter. But his declaration that the interior of 
the countr}^ is watered partly by springs, was contradicted by so many 
— one of these being Linant Bey — as to convince me that it was mis- 



FILTERING THE NILE. 



199 



taken. The ponds I saw — this day in considerable number, seven 
miles from the river — are filled by filtration from the Nile. Linant Bey 
says that the water of the Nile filters through to any distance where 
water is found in the valley. From another authority I learned that it 
penetrates to the Oasis. The ponds I saw to-day were of various 
depths, shapes and sizes. Some few had clear water in them — the 
shallower had a mere daub of mud at the bottom, while the sides were 
green with young wheat — and the deepest were half filled with a green 
puddle. A large number of men were employed in cleaning out the 
canal, and some of our party saw others employed upon a new one. 
The first thought of many, in reading about this filtration of Nile water, 
will be of the passage in Herodotus about the actual burial place of the 
king in the Great Pyramid. Speaking of the Second Pyramid, Hero- 
dotus says,* "It does not approach the magnitude of that of Cheops (I 
have measured them both) ; it has neither subterranean structures nor 
canal to convey the waters of the Nile; whereas the other, where it is 
said the tomb of Cheops is placed, is in an island, and is surrounded by 
the waters of the Nile, which are conducted there by a canal constructed 
for the purpose." This version, which I translate from Larcher, inti- 
mates that the pyramid itself stood in an island, and was surrounded by 
a canal. But another version of the passage gives a different impres- 
sion. SirG. Wilkinson offers the passage thus: "It has neither under- 
ground chambers nor any canal flowing into it from the Nile, like the 
other, where the tomb of its founder is placed in an island surrounded 
by water." In another passage, Herodotus tells us (II. 124) that Che- 
ops made "the subterranean structures to serve him for a tomb, in an 
island formed by the waters of the Nile, which he introduced into it by 
a canal." There are some who, finding more and more "subterranean 
structures" the lower they go in the Great Pyramid, and of a very dif- 
ferent kind of building from mere foundation — that is, passages leading 
down and down again, so ,as to indicate some object lying deeper still, 
cannot but wonder whether there may not be a royal tomb at the bot- 
tom, with a moat of Nile water around it. What a discovery it would 
be! It must be observed, however, as Larcher points out, that Hero- 
dotus does not declare the king to be actually in the pyramid, but only 
his destined tomb; while Diodorus relates that the kings who built 
these pyramids were so odious to their subjects that neither of them 
was actually buried there. The people threatened to snatch the corpses 
from their graves, and tear them to pieces; so that the monarchs de- 
sired their families to inter them secretly in some unknown place.t 
We should hke to know, some day, whether the penetrating Nile has 
been searching out, for all these thousands of years, the secrets of that 
great prison-house which has permitted access to no other visitor. 

One of the most curious sights occurring in the course of an Egyp- 
tian country ride, like this of ours to-day, is of the little victories of 
the Nile over the Desert, in the outskirts of their battle-field. It is 
worth riding ten miles inland, if it were for nothing else, to see what 



* Herod. II. 127. 



j" Larcher's note to Herodotus, II. 127. 



200 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the soil is where the fertile and barren tracts meet. In the cucumber 
and melon patches, I saw holes dug which showed a layer of from two 
to five inches of rich black soil deposited upon the most hopeless yel- 
low sand. We all know that it is so. We all know how the Nile de- 
posits its mud ; but it is best witnessed by seeing the crust thus sharply 
cut through, and perceiving how it lies unmixed upon the sand. 

We passed villages, farms, and single dwellings to-day, with their 
dogs, geese, cattle, and children. The camels removed it further from 
hkeness to country scenes elsewhere than any other feature. We 
passed the village of Arabat el Matfoon (which means " the buried"), 
and came out upon the site and ruins of Abydus — a mighty place on 
its own account, whether it succeeded This or not. The position, for 
a capital city, is very fine. I doubt whether the situation of Thebes 
itself is finer, except that there the Nile is nearer, and in full view ; 
whereas, here it is merely traced by its evidences, unless the canals 
are full. From the south-east to the north-west is an amphitheatre of 
rocks, guarding the plain from the sands of the Lybian Desert. In the 
middle of this barrier, due west from the temples, is an opening of 
great interest. It is the road to the Great Oasis. How many caravans 
and mihtary processions have moved and gfittered along that road from 
the city, disappearing in that defile of the hills ! From those precipi- 
tous rocks now descend sandy slopes, as far as the mounds which lie 
between the hills and the fertile plain. The temple and palace — now 
the only coherent remains, are so far elevated as to afibrd a noble view 
of the wide area which they ruled. They rose above the city which 
now no doubt lies buried under these hillocky sands. A very distant 
range of heights, faint and soft in color, incloses the rest of the land- 
scape ; and from them to the temples spreads the rich plain, all varie- 
gated with groves and belts of palm and acacia, among which the vil- 
lages are hid. The airy space and brightness of this scene are not to 
be conveyed by description. 

The remaining temple and palace are mainly the work of Ramases 
the Great and his father Osirei. The temple is dedicated to Osiris, to 
whom indeed the whole area is sacred ; for this is one of the places 
where he was believed to have been buried ; and where the opulent 
families of the region all therefore desire to be buried too. This pecu- 
liarity, and that of the road to the Great Oasis beginning here, suffi- 
ciently account for the grandeur of Abydus, after it had parted with its 
primitive distinction of being, as This, the capital of Upper Egypt. 
Meeting Ramases and his father here, we think differently of them 
from what we do at Thebes. Here, they are comparatively moderns, 
though living while the Hebrews were driving out the inhabitants of 
the Holy Land. Ramases and his father were as much younger than 
the monarchs on whose foundations they built as we are younger than 
Josephus and the conquering Titus who laid low the temple of Solo- 
mon. This temple contained the celebrated tablet, — the tablet of Aby- 
dus — on which was cut, by order of Ramases the Great, a fist of names 
of the kings his predecessors. This tablet is now in the British Mu- 
seum. As far as it goes, it most satisfactorily accords with the memo- 



ABYDUS GIRGEH 



201 



rials on the temples and palaces, and with the names given on the walls 
of the Ramaseum at Thebes. But the beginning of the list is unhap- 
pily broken away; and we thus lose the light we most wanted for the 
illustration of the earlier periods of Egyptian history. 

Ramases lined one chamber of this temple throughout with alabaster. 
The only part of this building which could be entered when we were 
there was the hall ; and even there we could only creep about among 
the capitals of the pillars. We could not even count them. I made 
out that there were two in the width; but I could not penetrate further 
than the seventh in length ; which made fourteen. An Arab, whom 
we sent in to count the rest, said there were twenty-six in all. If 
Ramases could have looked forward to the time when his temple would 
be explored in this way, how he would have mourned for his religion 
and for mankind ! The capitals of these pillars are so large, and the 
architraves so deep, that the hall, if cleared out, must be very lofty. I 
saw the cornices of two portals ; but there is no saying what lies be- 
hind them. Air and light are let in by holes in the roof. 

The palace at hand is remarkable for its roof, which is of sandstone, 
while the walls are of limestone. The blocks which, laid together by 
their broadest face, form a roof of prodigious weight and solidity, are 
hollowed out into a vaulted form — a laborious and primitive method 
of vaulting for people who certainly understood the principle of the 
arch. The sculptures on the walls are still clear ; and there are strong 
traces of color. One superb boat caught my attention. The king, and 
the ape of Thoth, and some other small figures were in it ; and one ex- 
tremity was ornamented with the ram's horns, while the other had two 
towers, crowned with the moon. 

We walked on, about a quarter of a mile, over mounds of broken 
pottery and sand, to see such forlorn remains of these two great cities 
as lie above ground, to grieve and tantalize the eye. A limestone gate- 
way, gayly painted, is partly disinterred ; and also the corner portion 
of some place once lined with alabaster, blocks and fragments of which 
are lying about. There is a good deal of red granite, — some sculpture, 
and two blocks which appear to be the flanks of a pylon. There were 
some black stel» and blocks ; and plenty of crude brick. This was all ; 
but I would not, for much, have missed it. Such places are full of in- 
terest in any state; for their monuments, if their monuments remain; 
for their desolation, and the harvest of thoughts yielded by that barren- 
ness, if the sand has spread itself over all. 

We rode away from the begging Arabs of Arabat, and found a charm- 
ing spot whereon to take our rest and luncheon. We passed that rare 
object, — a round, natural-looking pond of blue water, in a basin of the 
desert, with palms scattered about it: and then we came to a grove 
where the palms sprang up, straight and lofty, from an expanse of grass 
of the vivid green of our April turf. There remained the ride to Gir- 
geh, which occupied three hours and a half. It was all through the 
same rich plain which we had overlooked from the mounds of Abydus; 
and the fertility never failed, all the way, except where patches of the 
coarse grass called halfeh lay here and there between the fields. Gir- 



202 



EASTERN LIFE. 



geh looked fine as we approached it, with its tall minarets, its thick 
grove behind, and the range of mountains on the other side of the blue 
line of river. The rocks were red in the sunset, and the ghostly moon 
was steahng up behind them as we reached the shore. When the after- 
glow had died away, and the moon had assumed her glory, it was plea- 
sant to sit watching the currents of the river in the trail of golden light 
she cast. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

BENEE HASAN.— MASGOON.—PYRA^IIDS OF DASHOOR AND SAKKARA. 
— MEI\IPHIS.— MUMOT PITS.— CONSECRATION OF BRUTES. 

It is safe and easy now to visit the caves of Benee Hasan ; but it 
was dangerous or impossible a quarter of a centur}'- ago. The village 
now lies apparently roofless and ruined ; but it is still inhabited to a 
certain extent, and hj people of good character. It was formerly a 
pirate village. When no boat on the river was safe from pillage in 
passing Benee Hasan, and murders became frequent, Ibraheem Pasha 
took the matter in hand. He brought his troops round the hills, sur- 
prised the place in the night, and shot almost every individual in it — 
man, woman, and child. 

The village is seen from a ravine a httle above the caves. From 
this point, the further view is of the rich valley and its winding river; 
but the near view is wild enough. Down this ravine trotted a very 
large fox, which, from its size, looked at first hke a jackal. Some of 
the lower strata of the rocks are worn away, leaving the upper parts 
overhanging. Strange boulders are perched at intervals along the 
brink of the ravine, some being cut sheer through, like felled trees ; 
and those which were entire exactly resembling (and they were all 
alike) large petrified sheep without their heads. Similar boulders 
stood at intervals on either side the great road, easily traceable from 
the front of the caves, which led up the steep, from the boats to the 
tombs. 

Up this road came the funeral processions, to the caves which are 
opened in the strata of the rock. We must remember how very long 
ago this was. We must remember that Josephus, in his national van- 
ity, desired to make out that the Hebrews were descended from the 
Shepherd Race of invaders, and falsified history for the purpose; and 
then, we must remember that some of these tombs were sealed up be- 
fore the Shepherd Kings entered Egypt. As that hated host swept 
conquering by, and perhaps looked up at these rocks as they passed, 
some of these tombs were occupied and closed — their walls being co- 
vered with the paintings which were before our eyes this day. The 
tombs I speak of bear date from the latter part of the First Period. 
They are the oldest known monuments in the country, except the 
Pyramids. 



BENEE HASAN. 



203 



It is in one of these caves, however, that some people have fancied 
they have found a procession of Joseph's brethren. It may be natural 
for those who go from a Christian country, with little other antecedent 
interest in Egypt than its being the abode of Joseph and his descend- 
ants, to look for Hebrew personages on the monuments. But I think 
such travelers should take some little pains to reflect and observe before 
they say that they have found them. A very Httle observation would 
show that the Egyptians never put on their monuments anything that 
they were ashamed of. There are no traces of the Shepherd Race. 
There are certainly none of the Hebrews as a nation — except where 
the cities of Judah and the captives of Jerusalem come in among the 
pictures of Sheshonk's conquests. There was no reason for celebrat- 
ing them while they were neither enemies nor captives, but only the 
lowest working class in the country. Still less reason was there for 
representing the brethren of Joseph, who came as individuals or a 
family, and not as representatives of any nation, or even tribe. It is 
thus improbable beforehand that the Hebrews should appear on any 
early monuments. 

In the next place, the procession here conjectured to have been one 
of Hebrew offerers, can be shown, I think, to be a very different set of 
people indeed. I will presently explain why. But, further, if the 
discoveries of Lepsius and the conclusions of Bunsen are right, in re- 
lation to the dates of the Three great Periods of Egyptian history (and 
it would take much power and learning to overthrow them), this parti- 
cular tomb was painted a thousand years before Joseph was born. This 
tomb bears date in the reign of Osirtasen, who is now believed, on new 
evidence produced by Dr. Lepsius, to be the Sesortasen of the twelfth 
dynasty of the Monuments ; the Sesonchosis of the same dynasty of 
Manetho. According to the same evidence, the Shepherd Kings came 
in in the middle of the thirteenth dynasty, remained 926 years, and 
were then driven out by the great Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty ; 
under one of whom Moses led away the Hebrews. The Septuagint 
declares their residence in Egypt to have lasted 215 years ; the He- 
brew Chronology gives 480 years. Whichever be preferred, it is clear 
that this tomb must have been shut up many hundred years before Jo- 
seph was born. 

This tomb, — the twenty-ninth from the South, and second from the 
North, — has a vaulted portico, with two fluted pillars ; — beautiful Doric 
pillars they would have been called, if erected many centuries later. 
Throughout its chambers, its basement is painted a deep red ; and on 
this basement, and the architraves and everywhere, the hieroglyphics 
are green; the effect of which is extremely good. — The interior cham- 
ber contains the pedestal of a statue. Two longitudinal architraves 
divide the ceiling of this outer chamber into three portions, which are 
vaulted, and richly starred. There are three pits in this chamber; and 
there were four pillars ; but they are gone. 

It is in this painted chamber that the procession occurs which many 
have supposed, and all have striven to suppose, might be the arrival of 
Joseph's brethren. At each end of the row stands a great man. (There 



204 



EASTERN LIFE. 



is no sitting figure, as some have reported.) The hieroglyphics show 
that neither of these great men can be Pharaoh or Joseph. The prin- 
cipal figure is named Nefothph; and his parents' names are also given. 
He is presented as governor of this district, on the east side of the 
Nile. He is no doubt the owner of the tomb. — The number of per- 
sons presented to the king by Joseph was five ; and the number who 
had arrived were seventy : but here we have written up over the heads 
of the strangers the word "captives," and the number "thirty-seven." 
The complexions are of the yellow, by which the Egyptians designated 
the whites ; the tint of the men's faces being only a little deeper than 
that of the women. The men wear beards, tunics, and sandals : the 
women have their hair long, and bound round the temples. They wear 
tunics; — one at least with a very handsome Greek border, as we should 
call it if Greece had existed then ; and they are all shod in ankle-boots. 
Two children's heads emerge from ornamented panniers slung on an ass. 
The offerings brought are not like what the sons of Jacob would have 
to give. After a wild goat and gazelle, comes a handsome present of 
ostriches ; — quite a flock of them; and the procession closes with a red 
man who carries an ibis. Now, it is curious that no account that I have 
met with of this celebrated procession has mentioned the ostriches ; which 
are precisely the gift of the whole set w^hich Joseph's brethren could 
not have brought. And there is no pretence that we could see for stop- 
ping short at the ostriches, which join on to the rest of the procession 
without any interval, and, with the man carrying the ibis, finish the 
subject. 

What shall we say to this omission ? And what shall we say to a 
traveler (Mrs. Romer), who coolly reports, without any apparent shame, 
that she has brought away from Benee Hasan the head and shoulders 
of a figure w^hich she does not doubt to be that of a Jewish captive; — 
her dragoman having cleverly detached from the wall this interesting 
specimen of antiquity ! Where are our hopes for the monuments of 
Egypt, if passing travelers are to allow their servants, (who know no 
better,) to commit thefts for them in such a way as this ? Who will 
undertake to say what may be the value of any one head and shoulders 
in a group which may be made unintelligible by its absence ! It is 
mournful enough to see what scientific antiquarians do; — how one saws 
through the middle of a tablet of inscriptions; and another knocks down 
one pillar of a series ; and another carries away a group, — symbolical 
and necessary in its own place : but there really seems no hope left if 
desultory travelers are to pick and steal at their fancy from a repository 
where everything has its place, and is in its place. 

I visited the whole thirty of these tombs; and found twenty-one which 
may be called commonplace ; by which I mean that they contained the 
ordinary pits for the reception of bodies, a few niches, a few mock 
door-ways, — which are frequently a form of tablet for inscriptions ; — 
some with remains or traces of pillars ; some with small inner cham- 
bers; many with slightly vaulted roofs, and usually an architrave to 
divide the vaulted from the plain part of the ceiling. Where the pil- 
lars are gone, the circular bases which are left are so smooth as to 



BENEE HASAN. 



205 



perplex one's thought as to what has been done to them : — as smooth 
as if some dexterous dragoman had sawn through the precious shaft, 
to indulge his employer with a new toy. The pillars which remain 
are often very beautiful. In the southern caves, they consist of the 
stems of four water plants, springing from a large, solid, circular base, 
and bound together below the capital, which is formed of four lobes of 
lotus buds. — The polygonal pillars which I have mentioned as being 
truly Doric have simply a lowly abacus between the shaft and the 
architrave. 

The tombs throughout are not sculptured, except the hieroglyphic 
inscriptions, but painted on plaster. In many places the plaster seems 
to have been purposely broken or scraped away, — so hard is the mate- 
rial, and so vivid the painting, in the corners that are left. This ruin 
was probably wrought by the Christians, who have elsewhere cut their 
crosses deep into the very figures on the walls. — Considering the early 
times, the colors here are various. I found a bright scarlet, — I think 
for the first time. The women are yellow skinned throughout. There 
are multitudes of pairs of wrestlers in what are called the mihtary pic- 
tures ; and these pairs are of a darker and lighter red, so as to show 
distinctly the intertwining of the lithe limbs. The birds, which are 
very various, rejoice throughout in a prodigiously gay plumage. 

I will not indulge myself, and weary my readers, with going over the 
nine tombs which we found remarkable and full of interest. I will only 
just ask those who read to bear in mind the antiquity of these paintings, 
while I mention a few particulars of them. 

We-have here the art of writing as a familiar practice, in the scribes 
who are numbering the stores on every hand. There are ships which 
would look handsome in Southampton Water, any sunny day. There 
are glass-blowers who might be from Newcastle, but for their dress and 
complexion. There are flax-dressers, spinners, weavers, — and a pro- 
duction of cloth which an English manufacturer would study with in- 
terest. There are potters, painters, carpenters and statuaries. There 
is a doctor attending a patient ; and a herdsman physicking cattle. The 
hunters employ arrows, spears and the lasso. The lasso is as evident 
as on the Pampas at this day. — There is the Nile full of fish, and a 
hippopotamus among the ooze. There is the bastinado for the men ; 
and the flogging of a seated woman. Nothing is more extraordinary 
than the gymnastics and other games of the women. Their various 
games of ball are excellent. — The great men are attended by dwarfs 
and buffoons, as in a much later age ; and it is clear that bodily infirmity 
was treated with contempt ; — deformed and decrepit personages ap- 
pearing in the discharge of the meanest offices. — It was an age when 
this might be looked for; and when w^ar would be the most prominent 
occupation, and wrestling the prevailing sport ; and probably also the 
discipline of the soldiery : and when hunting, fishing and fowling 
would be very important pursuits. But then, — what a power of re- 
presentation of these things is here! and what luxury co-existing with 
those early pursuits ! Here are harpers with their harps of seven strings ; 
and garments and boat-sails with elegant patterns and borders, where, 



206 



EASTERN LIFE. 



by the way, angular and regular figures are pointedly preferred ; — and 
the ladies' hair, disordered and flying about in their sports, has tails and 
tassels, very like what may have been seen in London drawing-rooms 
in no very remote times. The incident which most reminds one of the 
antiquity of these paintings is that the name of bird, beast, fish or arti- 
ficer is written up over the object delineated. It is the resource, — not 
needed here, however, of the artist w^ho wrote on his picture "this is 
the man," — " this is the monkey." Another barbarism is the same that 
I have mentioned elsewhere ; — that the great man, the occupant of the 
tomb, has his greatness signified by bigness, being a giant among mid- 
dle-sized people. 

We spent four hours in the diligent study of these tombs ; and I ran 
over the note-worthy nine once more, to keep them all distinct in my 
memory. The wind was so high that we could not leave the bank till 
after sunset ; so we had excellent leisure for noting down on the spot 
what we had seen. 

Our letters had lately told us of snow^ eighteen feet deep in York- 
shire ; and at this date (4th February) I find in my journal that our 
days were " like August days on Windermere." The thermometer 
stood at 74° in the shaded cabin in the middle of the day. It bad been 
down to 40°, one cold morning, up the river : but I had never felt any 
degree of cold that was really uncomfortable ; and rarely any heat that 
could be seriously complained of. The flies were troublesome for some 
hours in the middle of the day, so as to compel us to sit on deck instead 
of in the cabin ; but they let us alone in the mornings and evenings, 
which were the only times when I, for one, cared to be in the cabin. 

While we stopped at a village for milk, one afternoon, a man came 
down to us for medical advice. I used to think it one of the prettiest 
sights we saw when, on such occasions, Mr. E. examined the case with 
as much care as he would have given to a brother's, and Mr. Y. ad- 
ministered whatever aid could be given. Such offices cannot but abate 
Mohammedan prejudices against the Christians ; and I trust all who go 
up the Nile endeavor to do their part, with prudence and earnest kind- 
ness. Without much quacking, — without danger of doing real harm, — 
some little relief may be given by simple medicines, and yet more per- 
haps by sending away the patient with hope in his heart. Any advice 
or medicine which he may obtain from English travelers is likely to be 
safer and better than what he wiU have at home ; and at any rate, he 
may be granted the cordial of sympathy and good-will. 

The wind to-night was high ; and it so jostled us against the bank 
as to destroy sleep. In the morning we passed another foundered 
vessel, whose masts just showed themselves above the water. The 
river was now less interesting to us than at any previous time. The 
crocodiles were absent ; and the birds were scarcely more numerous 
than at home. The water had sunk so much, and the hills had so re- 
treated, that the shores looked very flat. Yet we felt rather heavy at 
heart when we recognized objects, — as the False Pyramid to-day, — 
which told us that we were drawing near to Cairo. So far from being 
"bored to death with the Nile," as we had been often threatened, we 



MASGOON. 



207 



heartily enjoyed, to the last moment, our boat life, and felt really melan- 
choly when packing up our books and papers for the Cairo hotel. 
We had still, however, two more days from the present date to spend 
on board. 

On the evening of the 7th we walked on shore at Masgoon, where 
we stopped in order to visit, the next day, the Pyramids of Dashoor and 
Sakkara, and the remains of Memphis. When we had passed the vil- 
lage and groves, we saw in the desert such an array of pyramids as 
justifies Strabo's description of them as being all along the brow of the 
hills. The people here look comfortable, though their district is the 
property of Abbas Pasha, who is not noted for conducing to the comfort 
of humanity. This village and its lands are a present to him from his 
grandfather, the Pasha. He gives the people the land, seed, and irri- 
gation, and takes half the produce. Such are the nominal terms, which, 
in Egypt generally, are something widely different from the actual bar- 
gain. The palms here are very fine. The -wool, which the people 
were spinning and reeling, was white ; — the first white wool I remem- 
ber to have seen. The distaffs were clumsy ; but both men and women 
were as heartily busy as they could have been about better work. The 
children were ludicrously afraid of us ; and not even baksheesh could 
reconcile them. We were to them, no doubt, what the dreaded "black 
man" is to cottagers' children in England. One httle boy fled like the 
wind from the offer of a five para piece ; and he could hardly be per- 
suaded to take it from behind his mother's skirts, where he sought 
refuge. A large quantity of mud bricks was here laid out to dry. 
They had an unusual proportion of straw in them ; so that I believe 
they would have burned to ashes if set fire to. This naturally brought 
to mind the brick-making of the Hebrews, who were from about this 
time never out of my mind till we reached Damascus. We were on 
their traces now ; and afterwards all through our journeyings in Arabia 
and Palestine. All the next day I saw them in the plain of Memphis ; 
saw the remains of the heavy works in which they might have toiled ; 
in the brick-fields, and in the cucumber and melon grounds which 
yielded the food they so longed for in the Desert. When I looked 
upon those fruitful plots, neatly fenced with millet stalks ; and upon 
the bright verdure which spread like a carpet beneath the palms, — a 
carpet of the richest clover ; — and upon the blue ponds inland, and the 
noble river flowing gently between its fertile banks, with family groups 
basking in the evening sun above the stream, or sitting in the checkered 
shade of the acacia groves, I could understand the longing of the He- 
brews for a return to Egypt on any terms. From the midst of such a 
desert as I had seen at Aswan, what is such a scene as this to the 
memory, — a sunset among palms, ponds, clover-fields, and acacia 
groves, near the adored Nile ! Might not this contrast make any exile 
as heart-sick to think of as the image of any country under heaven, — 
unless going from slavery, he was worthy of the freedom in store for 
him ; which the Hebrews were not, and could not become on a sudden. 

While we were on shore this evening, Mrs. Y., who had remained 
on board, was not without amusement. Oar crew, always like chil- 



208 



EASTERN LIFE. 



dren, went to child's play. By Mrs. Y.'s account, it was a capital 
scene. The Buck took office as Governor; was high and mighty, and 
had the tax-payers brought before him. There was no end to the bas- 
tinado and imprisonment he inflicted on unfortunate debtors, who told 
such tales of outrageous misfortune as were never heard before. 
Where our children play school, and naughtiness, and punishment, 
these men play tax-gathering, mishap, and bastinado. 

When we were ready to start, on the morning of the 8th, there was 
much disputing between Alee and the donkey men: and the sheikh 
was called to give his opinion. The difficulty was that the men wanted 
the whole pay (seven piastres per donke}^) in advance, which of course 
Alee was unwilling to give to strangers. He offered half in advance: 
and I beheve it was settled so, at last. The men's plea was that a party 
of Europeans the day before had agreed to pay seven piastres per don- 
key; but had at last paid only four, alleging discontent with the ani- 
mals. I hope this was not true. 

We crossed the rich plain, which was very lively from its being 
market-day. The assemblage of people was considerable ; most of 
them bringing something to market. The women carried loads like 
those of their husbands; — baskets of charcoal, from the acacia-groves; 
tow, wool, kids carried on the shoulder, &c. The women's faces were 
carelessly covered, or not at all; and we were suddenly struck by the 
lighter shade of complexion here. 

We came abruptly upon the Desert, near the two stone Pyramids of 
Dashoor. The first, which changes its angle half way up, is the ugliest 
building I ever saw, being at once clumsy and decrepit in appearance. 
I saw a wild cat run up the south-west angle, and hide itself among 
the stones; and Mr. E. had just before seen a large fox. On every 
side but the north, the stones were rough and broken. One circum- 
stance became thus apparent, which struck me as worth remembering, 
— the method of joining the blocks by locking them with a stone-key. 
A square hole on one side of each block being fitted to the correspond- 
ing hole of the other, makes an oblong square hole, of course: and an 
oblong square of stone fitting into it locks them together in one direc- 
tion, as dovetailing would in two. — On the north side, though the sur- 
face was crusted, there was a smoothness and accurate joining of the 
stone, which showed what the face must once have been. The en- 
trance is at the north; and we saw the square hole; but there is no- 
thing within, it is understood, to tempt the passing traveler to enter, 
while so near other pyramids vt^hich are worth all the time and effort 
he has to spare.~The best effect of these pyramids is when one looks 
up to the glorious sky above them, and sees how sharp and bright they 
stand out, — the yellow edifice glittering against the blue heaven. 

The brick Pyramids of Dashoor are now crumbled down into mere 
ruin. Yet it is behoved by some that the northernmost of these is the 
one which once bore the proud inscription recorded by Herodotus. 
The old Pharaoh, of the First Period, Asychis, who built that pyramid 
(whichever it may be) was prouder of his brick than of any stone edi- 
fice, — whether from its novelty, or from its having had a vaulted roof 



MEMPHIS. 



209 



within, — (a trial of the arch, as Dr. Richardson suggests,) — there is no 
saying now: but this is the account Herodotus gives of the matter. 
" This prince, wishing to surpass ail the kings who had reigned in 
Egypt before him, left for a monument a pyramid of brick, with this 
inscription cut upon a stone : ' Despise me not, in comparing me with 
the pyramids of stone. I am as much above them as Jupiter (Amun) 
is above the other gods: for I have been built of bricks made of the 
mud brought up from the bottom of the lake!' This is the most me- 
morable thing Asychis did."* 

From hence to Sakkara was a ride of about two miles across the De- 
sert. We enjoyed the ride, being aided and braced by a cool wind 
from the south, which carried us along cheerily. From the first sand- 
ridge, we saw the white citadel of Cairo, standing finely on its rock, 
under the Mokuttam range. I was sorry to see it, and to receive its 
warning that our Nile voyage was jnst over. 

At Sakkara, we found ourselves among the remains of the Necro- 
polis. It was a mournful confusion of whitened skulls, deep pits, 
mummy rags, and mounds of sand. 

It was here that Herodotus rose into his enthusiasm about the gran- 
deur and wisdom of Egypt, and learned most that he knew of its his- 
tory, and saw the mighty works which glorified the name and memory 
of Sesostris and other old Pharaohs. It was here that in a later day, — 
(two-thirds of the centuries which lie between Herodotus and us,) — 
the learned physician of Bagdad saw what transported him with admi- 
ration and astonishment, though he complains with indignation of the 
mischief wrought by treasure-seekers, who were even parting the 
stones of the edifices for the sake of the copper used in joining them. 
He looked upon the place as ruined, and mourned over the disappear- 
ance of Memphis. What would he think of it now ! — Seven centuries 
ago, Abdallatif wrote thus of the spot we were on to-day. 

" Let us now pass on to other traces of the ancient grandeur of 
Egypt. I am now speaking of the ruins of the old capital of this coun- 
try, which w^as situated in the territory of Geezeh, a little above Fos- 
tat. This capital was Memphis: it was there that the Pharaohs re- 
sided ; and this city was the seat of empire in Egypt. It is of this city 
that we are to understand the words of God in the Kuran, when he is 
speaking of Moses : He entered into the city at the moment when the 
inhabitants were sinking into sleep : and again : Moses then went 
forth from the city, full of terror, and looking about him. For Moses 
made his abode in a village of the territory of Geezeh, a little way from 
the capital; which village was called Dimouh. The Jews have a sy- 
nagogue there at this day. The ruins of Memphis now occupy a space 
which is half-a-day's journey every way. This city was flourishing 
in the time of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, and a long time before 
them, and a long time after them." . ..." As for the idols 
which are found among these ruins, whether one considers their num- 
ber or their prodigious magnitude, it is a thing beyond all description, 



U 



* Herod. II. 136. 



210 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and of which no idea can be conveyed ; but there is a thing yet more 
worthy of admiration ; and that is the precision of their forms, the just- 
ness of their proportions, and their resemblance to nature." And then 
this anatomist goes on to show what are the requisites to the perfect 
representation of the human frame, with its muscular niceties, and con- 
tinues : " There are some of these statues which hold in their hands a 
kind of cylinder, — probably a roll of writing: and the artist has not 
forgotten to represent the folds and wrinkles which are formed in the 
skin of the hand when it is closed, towards the outer part by the little 
finger. The beauty of the face of these statues, and the perfect propor- 
tions which are observed there, are such as the most excellent art of men 
alone can effect, and the best that such a substance as stone can re- 
ceive. There is nothing wanting but the flesh and the blood. The 
figure of the ear, its orifice, and its sinuosities, are given to perfection. — 
I have seen two lions placed opposite and near to each other: their 
aspect inspired terror. Notwithstanding their colossal size, so far be- 
yond nature, all the truth of form and proportion had been preserved. 
They have been broken, and covered with earth." — " A man of good 
sense, seeing all these remains of antiquity, feels disposed to excuse 
that error of the vulgar which supposes that men of distant ages lived 
much longer than those of our times : that they were of gigantic sta- 
ture: and that by means of a wand with which they struck the stones, 
the stones obeyed their will, and transported themselves wherever the\^ 
were desired. We remain indeed in a sort of stupor when we consi- 
der how much of genius, of resolution and of patience, must have been 
united with a profound knowledge of geometry, to execute such works ; 
what different instruments from any that we know of must have been 
employed; and what obstinate labor; and to what point these men 
have studied the structure of animals and of men."* 

These are some few particulars of what Abdallatif saw among these 
ruins of Memphis, which in his day occupied a space of half-a-day's 
journey. At the end of seven centuries, the aspect of the place is this. 
From the village of Mitrahenny (which now occupies the site), can be 
seen only palm woods, a blue pond, rushes, and a stretch of verdant 
ground, broken into hollows, where lie a single colossus, a single capital 
of a column, a half-buried statue of red granite, twelve feet high, and 
some fragments of granite strewn among the palms. This is all of the 
mighty Memphis ! 

The colossus is the celebrated Ramases' statue, given to the British 
Museum by Signer Caviglia and Mr. Sloane, but left in its grassy hol- 
low on account of the expense. It is very beautiful. The serene and 
cheerful face is like that of the Colossi at Aboo-Simbil, but more beau- 
tiful. Each hand holds a scroll, with a cartouche at the end. There 
it lies, for the Nile to flow over it every year, and the grass to grow up 
round it when the waters have retired. It hes on its face: but by go- 
ing down into the hollow, we could obtain a good view of the features, 
which are as sharp cut, and almost as delicately finished, as any of 



* Relation de l Egypte, Livre I. Ch. 4. 



THE MUMMY PITS. 



211 



Chantrey's works at home. The upper part of the statue is somewhat 
corroded ; but the under part retains its pohsh. If this statue is really 
the colossus which Herodotus speaks of as erected in front of the tem- 
ple of Phthah, what a pity it is that further research is not made, and 
that glorious structure laid open to view from beneath the mounds ! 
Herodotus says that that statue of Sesostris was accompanied by one of 
his wife, of similar proportions, and by four smaller ones of his sons.* 
But, if Lepsius is right in believing Sesostris to be a Pharaoh of the 
First Period, this is not the statue. At all events, there it lies in the 
mud ; likely to be, as Sir G. Wilkinson observes, burned for lime, any 
day, by the Turks. 

The view which I obtained from a ridge in the Necropolis was truly 
dreary. It was at the colorless time of day — noon : and there was no 
rehef to the white expanse of waste but black and bristling palm tops 
in clumps, with a slight glimpse of the green beneath. The citadel 
of Cairo, white, on its white rock, was about a dozen miles off to the 
northeast ; the white city stretching from it westwards — a slender belt 
of black palms dividing it from the desert plain on which I stood. A 
range of white mounds near almost hid the alluvion, beyond which rose 
the white Arabian hills. All around, and filling up the whole scene 
to the west, stretched the glaring Desert, oppressing the sense. Yel- 
low "sand ponds," as they are called in my journal, lay between the 
mounds. To the northwest stood the sharp-shadowed Pyramids of 
Geezeh ; and nearer, those of Abooseer : and close at hand, that of 
Sakkara. 

This Pyramid is built in degrees or terraces ; the spaces between 
the gradations being very wide. Five of these degrees are clearly 
marked all round ; a sixth was traceable by a bit of wall uncovered on 
the north side: and a deep well was at our feet, on that north side, 
wherein there is, as we were told, an entrance, probably opening upon 
a seventh terrace. The sand has hidden a large proportion of this 
Pyramid : but, making all allowance for that, we saw no great wonder, 
nor any beauty, thus far. 

We next went to the mummy pits ; and first into the underground 
world of ibises. There is no season of Egyptian travel in which one's 
sensations are more strange than in that spent in mummy pits. Here 
were underground chambers, pillared, painted, and sculptured, exca- 
vated into ornamented recesses, and consecrated to the gods ; and de- 
stined for the burial of birds. And then the cats ! In a sort of quarry, 
lay strata of these bodies, the rags fluttering out, and the layers con- 
sisting of hosts of cats. The feline population of a whole continent for 
ages would be required, it seems, to fill these pits. The cats are 
swathed like the human body ; the ibises are inclosed in red pots, like 
chimney-pots, with the round end cemented on. 

I am far from wondering at the feelings of contempt and disgust ex- 
pressed by most travelers who visit these pits. I was conscious of some 
tendency to those feelings in myself; but I think it is necessary to re- 



* Herod. II. 110. 



212 



EASTERN LIFE. 



member here, as in all strange positions of the mind, that we ought to 
understand before we despise, and that, usually, the more we understand 
the less we despise. Of course I do not, and never shall, pretend to 
explain, in any degree, the old Egyptian practices with regard to the 
consecration of animals; but two or three considerations occurred to me 
on the spot which appeared to be worth revolving. 

The most obvious particular of old Egyptian thought and feeling — • 
that which presses upon the traveler's notice everywhere among the 
monuments, so as to compel him to a reiteration of the fact which must 
be excused in him — is the sacredness of Life, and therefore of Organi- 
zation. The evidences of this are sometimes such as our existing 
morality and taste forbid to be dwelt upon or described to any public, 
or to any large number who have not been there to witness the simpli- 
city and the solemnity with which this subject is regarded and treated 
in the monuments; but my own impression is that there is as much 
work for the philosopher — the religious philosopher — in contemplating 
the ancient ideas of sacred things as for the antiquarian in interpreting 
the forms of their conveyance ; and it may yet perhaps be found that 
the speculations of the most devout Christian and the most enlightened 
of the old heathens have the same root, and a development not so dif- 
ferent as the superficial might suppose. It may be seen, sooner or 
later, that in our reverence for Life, we underrate the facts of Organi- 
zation as much as the old Egyptians appear to us to have overrated 
them, in their reverence for Life. The Christian contempt for the body 
may be found to be an error as great and as mischievous as any heathen 
worship of it. It may appear that, in considering the animal frame, so 
"fearfully and wonderfully made," as a carcass, a mere shell for the 
habitation of the principle of Life, to be despised and disparaged as a 
mere instrumentality of what we call Mind, we are as wrong as any 
old heathens could be in striving after a factitious immortality for it. 
For our contempt of the body — for any species of asceticism — we are, 
as far as I can see, without any warrant to be found in Christianity or 
in true philosophy. In our just reverence for the higher part of man's 
nature, his powers of thought and feeling, we may be found, at length, 
to have adopted a false supposition of facts, and to have striven after a 
separation not warranted by nature between those powers and the ani- 
mal frame. Wherever this separation of treatment has been aimed at, 
wherever asceticism has been practiced for the good of the soul, the 
object has failed; and precisely in proportion to men's contempt of the 
body has been the vitiation of the mind. The whole history of asceti- 
cism shows that the mental and moral powers of man sink, or become 
corrupted, when the bodily frame is treated with indignity and cruelty, 
quite as certainly as when the animal appetites are unreasonably and 
unnaturally indulged. And the thoughtful philosopher sees that it 
must be so. All that we really know is that we know nothing of 
absolute creation; that we have no evidence of it, and can form no con- 
ception of it; that Life itself is an inexplicable fact to us; that we 
recognize it only through organization; and, that we have no right, and 
no power, to conceive of it as apart from organization — all our laborious 



CONSECRATION OF BRUTES. 



213 



attempts, so to conceive of it, terminating in imaginations of an organi- 
zation more subtle and refined than Nature has presented to our view. 
On such a subtle and refined organization a considerable number of 
men have in all ages fixed their imagination, their hope and their be- 
lief; but they have never succeeded in showing any evidence for it, 
while, in wandering away from the facts of Nature, they have injured 
their own best powers, and failed of the highest attainments possible to 
their nature. The highest of human beings, the holiest, and the safest 
in any event, would be one whose bodily frame was of the highest 
order originally, the most fully exercised (which includes its being the 
most perfectly disciplined), and whose functions of brain were therefore 
performed in the most perfect manner — giving him the highest moral 
and intellectual elevation possible to humanity. In the reverence for 
Life which would rest upon such a being, the unsophisticated Christian 
and the devout old Egyptian would meet. Previous to such an en- 
counter, the one might err in holding to his Platonic or Essene notions 
of a separate soul, clogged with a contemptible and obstructive body, 
and spurning the notion of its resurrection; and the other might err in 
regarding every animal frame as such a manifestation of deity as it 
would be profane to allow to decay; but in actually meeting with the 
highest example of existence ever offered to their notice, their common 
reverence for Life would be gratified to such a degree as to enable each 
to mend his philosophy, and both to ascertain more carefully than 
hitherto the ground of fact on which alone true philosophy can be 
reared. The Platonizing Christians of our time might have sympathy 
with the ancient philosopher who pointed contemptuously to a dead 
body, with the words, "See the shell of the flown bird!" but the Co- 
rinthian readers of Paul's Epistle would shrink from the saying, as the 
old Egyptians would; the early Christians from their belief in Paul's 
doctrine of the Resurrection; and the heathens from their belief that 
whatever had been gifted with sentient life was forever sacred. And 
if it came to argument between the two, whether the line of sacredness 
was to be drawn between Man and Brute, it certainly appears to most 
people now that in reason the Egyptian would have the advantage. 
Remembering that the Egyptians grounded their belief in the immor- 
tality of life on the constitution of living beings, on the mystery of their 
existence at all in the absence of any evidence of absolute creation, we 
must see that they could not draw a line of separation between any 
classes of beings who had sentient life. Any exclusion of brutes from 
the reverence entertained towards Life, and from its quality of immor- 
tality, is grounded solely on the plea of a divine revelation that Man 
shall either not die, or shall live again; and there are not a few devout 
receivers of this revelation who have refused to exclude brute animals 
from the condition of immortality; not a few Christian philosophers 
who have shrunk from declaring that beings which enjoy the intellec- 
tual and moral powers of the dog, for instance, shall be annihilated at 
death while Man survives. Such men as some of these are not treated 
with ridicule or contumely on account of this speculation, and they 
could hardly treat with ridicule or contumely the Egyptians who in 



214 



EASTERN LIFE. 



their reverence for the mystery of Life — the ultimate fact in nature to 
us all — treated with serious care its sole manifestation to them and to 
us — the organization of sentient beings. 

If the Egyptians ventured upon a step further back than the fact of 
Life, and assumed it to be a divine particle flowing forth from a self- 
existent and sole eternal Being, to flow back into its centre on the death 
of the body, it is clear that no hne could be drawn between the hu- 
man being and the brute, as to the reverence in which the sentient 
frame was to be held. — It is true, the Egyptians worshiped no human 
beings ; and they did pay religious observance to some brutes. They 
called their monarchs and great men "gods," explaining that by this 
they meant to dignify men whom the gods favored with intercourse and 
special protection: but they paid no reverential honors to them, as they 
did to brutes. This seems to have arisen from their reverence for In- 
stinct; which does truly answer to the original idea of inspiration; and 
is so acknowledged among all such primitive people as those who hold 
madness and idiotcy sacred. The original idea of inspiration is, exer- 
cise of mind without consciousness. Thus, the highest order of genius 
is with us the nearest approach to inspiration ; and among primitive 
and inexperienced nations, it is the unconscious and involuntary action 
from ideas which is seen in the idiot Highland child, or the lost Indian 
Fakeer, or the half-knavish, half-foolish Arabian derweesh; or, in old 
times, the magnetized utterer of the oracles, or the spontaneously-pro- 
phesying seer. The instinct of animals comes under this head, or ap- 
pears to do so. It appears to be action of mind unattended by conscious- 
ness; and it might w^ell, therefore, be taken for inspiration : and every 
action of the creature would then be watched for guidance, and every 
incident connected with it be accepted for an omen. It is as easily 
conceivable that the Egyptians, paying homage to beings above and below 
Man, actually raised the brute with his instinct above Man with his 
reason, in that one point of view which regarded his inspiration, as that 
there are men now who look with greater awe upon an idiot or crazed 
fanatic than on a rational person. In the old case, it was not the bruta- 
lity, and in the modern case, it is not the folly, that is reverenced: it is 
the mysterious working of mental faculty, apart from the will, which 
appears to those ignorant of the powers and functions of the brain to be 
the communication of Ulterior Thought through an unconscious me- 
dium. 

We do not know what the Egyptians did with the bodies of animals 
which they did not hold sacred. Abdallatif could find no remains of 
the camel, the horse or the ass: and on his inquiring of the old people 
in the neighborhood of the Memphis mummy-pits, they hastened to 
assure him that they had been struck by the absence of all traces of 
these animals. This absence of all trace is curious in the case of ani- 
mals which were not eaten. — It is no contradiction of the supposition 
that the Egyptians reverenced brutes for the possible reasons mentioned 
above, that they sacrificed some and ate others. In some cases they 
chose for sacrifice animals which were hated by the particular Deity in 
question: as in the case of the red ox. And in eating animals not dis- 



CONSECRATION OF BRUTES. 



215 



liked by the gods, they might have the same idea that Kes at the root 
of cannibalism and human sacrifices, in the South Sea islands, and 
probably everywhere else. The belief, in such cases, is that the gods 
wait to imbibe the spirit of the victim; and the idea is that the victim, 
in passing through the gods, becomes assimilated to their nature, and 
remains henceforth divine, to the extent of immortality at least, and 
usually in some other respects. It is thus an honor and blessing to be 
sacrificed; and the being eaten implies no disrespect to the perishable 
frame, because the body merely follows the analogy of the spirit's lot; 
and what is honorable to the one part of the creature cannot be disgrace- 
ful to the other. If the nobler part entered into the gods, the meaner 
might enter into the sons of the gods. 

The choice of animals for consecration and preservation was probably 
determined by the characters of their instinct. Herodotus declines to 
explain some particulars which were known to him, and which cer- 
tainly appear to have borne, in his view, a solemn import. — How can 
we say that it would not have been so with ourselves, if we had stood, 
with Herodotus, or Plato, or Pythagoras, in the inner apartments of the 
priests, surrounded by the monuments of their art, and the records of 
their learning, and favored with their confidence about matters of the 
nearest and the most general concern ! I own that in the absence of 
priests and papyri, when all around was dumb and desolate, and I had 
no external aid to knowledge but faded pictures of offerings and flutter- 
ing mummy rags, I could not resign myself to feelings of disgust and 
contempt. If I had been on the banks of some South African river, 
seeing a poor naked savage at his Fetish worship, I must have tried to 
learn what idea, however low, was at the bottom of his observance : and 
here, where I knew that men had read the stars, and compassed in- 
visible truths of geometry, and achieved unaccountable marvels of art, 
and originated, or transmitted, the theologies of the world, I could not 
despise them for one set of tenets and observances which remains unex- 
plained. I might lament that analogies have been the mischievous 
Will-o'-the-wisp to the human intellect that they appear to have been 
in the valley of the Nile, as in the plains of Asia, and the groves of 
Greece, and the wilderness of Middle Age scholarship in Europe: but 
this is a sorrow which one feels in every hour of actual study, in any 
country of the world. I might lament that aspiration, in its young and 
irrepressible activity, must make so many flights into a dim world of 
dreams, and come back perplexed and disheartened before it can learn 
to fly up to the glorious and unfailing light of Nature, to replenish its 
life : but this regret is only what one feels every day in exploring the 
only true history of Man, — the history of Ideas. I might lament that 
the Egyptians should have so framed and illustrated their faith, as that 
it must inevitably become corrupted in its diffusion: but this is the re- 
gret which attends the contemplation of the spread of every faith by 
which mankind has yet been guided. The old Egyptian faith deteri- 
orated into worshiping animals ; the Jewish into the Pharisaic super- 
stitions and oppressions rebuked throughout the Gospels; and what 
Christianity has become, among the widest class of its professors, let 



216 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the temples and congregations of the Greek and Latin churches show. 
Amidst these natural regrets remains the comfort that the great govern- 
ing Ideas of mankind, — the guiding lights of the human intellect, — 
have never failed, and have scarcely suffered eclipse. The great Ideas 
of Moral Obligation and strict retribution, of the supreme desirableness 
of moral good, and the eternal " beauty of holiness," pass from system 
to system, immortalizing all with which they assimilate, and finally an- 
nihilating all else, dispensing the best blessings that men have ever 
received, and promising an increase of them in all time to come. 

There was nothing else to be seen about this buried city but a tomb 
or two — a sarcophagus here — a mummy-case there. On our return to 
the river, we saw sights which did not tend to raise the spirits after 
the depressing influence of the aspect of old Memphis. We fell in 
with a wedding procession which was a sad antic exhibition. We saw 
a great number of men at work upon the causeway which crosses the 
plain ; and a large portion of their work consisted in carrying soil in 
frail-baskets, and scooping out the earth with their hands. Such is the 
state of manners and art on the spot where Herodotus held counsel 
with the wise men of the world, and where the greatest works of Man's 
hands were reared by means of science and art of which the world is 
not now capable ! 



CHAPTER XIX. 

VISIT TO THE PYRAMIDS.— ASCENT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.— IN- 
TERIOR.— TRADITIONS AND HISTORY ABOUT THE PYRAMIDS.— 
THE SPHINX.— FAREWELL TO ANCIENT EGYPT. 

The day was come which I dreaded — the day of our expedition to 
the Great Pyramids. I dreaded it, because I feared a sort of disap- 
pointment most difficult to bear — that of failing in the sight-seeing of 
the day. Since arriving at Thebes, I had not been well ; and I had no 
reason for confidence in my strength, in a place and enterprise so new. 
I had made up my mind not to be disconcerted if I should have to re- 
turn without having been either up or into the Pyramid ; but I was 
sorry to open my eyes upon the sunrise that morning. I went over in 
my mind all the stories I knew of persons who had failed, and felt that 
I had no better title to success than they. My comfort was in the 
Sphinx. I should see that, at all events. It did not mend the matter 
that I found that a messenger was sent to Cairo for our letters. Three 
of us had had no letters of a later date than the 5th of November; and 
this was the 9lh of February. I knew that the winter at home was a 
dreadful one — for weather, sickness and distress ; and never, I think, 
was I so anxious about letters from home, or so afraid to receive them. 
Whatever they might be, however, they would be awaiting me on my 
return. 

We set out for Geezeh at half-past eight, on fine handsome asses, so 



THE PYRAMIDS. 



217 



spirited as to be almost as good to ride as horses. To-day we once 
more came in sight of that curious sign of civihzation — shaven don- 
keys. Dark rings were left round the legs, and the neck and hind- 
quarters were shaven. The scarlet housings and gay rider made a 
set-out very unlike what one sees of donkey-riding at home. I was 
not aware till I came to Egypt how dependent a donkey is on dress. 

Our first adventure was being carried on men's shoulders over a 
muddy pond which stopped the way. We knew that our plague to- 
day would be from the multitude of country people who would obtrude 
their services upon us. At this pond the teasing began. Our drago- 
man met it vigorously, by trying to throw a pertinacious fellow, bigger 
than himself, into the water. It was a desperate scuffle, such as would 
make ladies shriek and fly in England ; but it came to nothing, as 
usual. All the rest of the way, men joined us from the fields on 
either hand, till, when we arrived at the sand, our train was swelled to 
forty. 

I was surprised to find myself disappointed in the Pyramids now, 
when it had been precisely the reverse at a distance. Instead of their 
growing larger as we approached, they became less and less wonder- 
ful, till at last they exactly met one's preconception, except in being 
rougher, and of a brighter tint. The platform on which the largest 
stands is higher than our reading had given us to guppose ; and the 
Second Pyramid, which at a distance looks as large as the other, here 
sinks surprisingly. This was to me the strongest evidence of the 
magnitude of the Great Pyramid. Though I have spoken of disap- 
pointment on a near approach, these mighty objects were perfectly ab- 
sorbing, as a little incident presently proved. One of our party said, 

on our arrival, "when we were passing the Sphinx ," "O ! the 

Sphinx!" cried I. "You don't mean that you have seen the Sphinx!" 
To be sure they had ; and they insisted on it that I had too ; that I 
must have seen it — could not have missed it. I was utterly bewilder- 
ed. It was strange enough to have forgotten it ; but not to have seen 
it, was inexplicable. However, on visiting it, later in the day, I found 
I had seen it. Being intent on the Pyramid before me, I had taken 
the Sphinx for a capriciously-formed rock, like so many that we had 
passed — forgetting that I should not meet with limestone at Geezeh. 
I rather doubt whether any traveler would take the Sphinx for anything 
but a rock unless he was looking for it, or had his eye caught by some 
casual light. One other anecdote, otherwise too personal for print, will 
show how engrossing is the interest of the Pyramid on the spot. The 
most precious articles of property I had with me abroad were two ear- 
trumpets, because, in case of accident happening tc? them, I could not 
supply the loss. I was unwilling to carry my trumpet up the Pyra- 
mid — knocking against the stones while I wanted my hands for climb- 
ing. So 1 left it below, in the hands of a trusty Arab. When I joined 
my party at the top of the Pyramid, I never remembered my trumpet ; 
nor did they; and we talked as usual, during the forty minutes we 
were there, without my ever missing it. When I came down, I never 
thought of it ; and I explored the inside, came out and lunched, and 



218 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Still never thought of my trumpet, till, at the end of three hours and a 
half from my parting with it, I saw it in the hands of the Arab, and 
was reminded of the astonishing fact that I had heard as well without 
it as with it, all that time. Such a thing never happened before, and 
probably never will again; and a stronger proof could not be offered of 
the engrossing interest of a visit to the Pyramid. 

The sheikh who met us on the spot, appointed our attendants ; — 
three to each of us. Mr. E. set out first, — waving an adieu to us till 
we should meet aloft. He mounted with a deliberate, quiet step, such 
as he could keep up to the end, and reached the summit in seventeen 
minutes. It took me about five minutes more. 

On looking up, it was not the magnitude of the Pyramid which made 
me think it scarcely possible to achieve the ascent; but the unrelieved 
succession, — almost infinite, — of bright yellow steps ; a most fatiguing 
image ! — Three strong and respectable-looking Arabs now took me in 
charge. One of them, seeing me pinning up my gown in front, that I 
might not stumble over it, gave me his services as lady's-maid. He 
turned up my gown all round, and tied it in a most squeezing knot, 
^ which lasted all through the enterprise. We set out from the north- 
east corner. By far the most formidable part of the ascent was the first 
six or eight blocks. If it went on to the top thus broken and precipi- 
tous, the ascent would, I felt, be impossible. Already, it was disagreea- 
ble to look down, and I was much out of breath. One of my Arabs 
carried a substantial camp-stool, which had been given me in London 
with a view to this very adventure, — that it might divide the higher 
steps, — some of which, being four feet high, seem impracticable enough 
beforehand. But I found it better to trust to the strong and steady lift- 
ing of the Arabs m such places, and, above everything, not to stop at 
all, if possible; or, if one must stop for breath, to stand with one's face 
to the Pyramid. I am sure the guides are right in taking people 
quickly. The height is not so great, in itself: it is the way in which 
it is reached that is trying to look back upon. It is trying to some 
heads to sit on a narrow ledge, and see a dazzling succession of such 
ledges for two or three hundred feet below; and there, a crowd of dimi- 
nutive people looking up, to see whether one is coming bobbing down 
all that vast staircase. I stopped for a few seconds two or three times, 
at good broad corners or ledges. — When I left the angle, and found 
myself ascending the side, the chief difficulty was over; and I cannot 
say that the fatigue was at all formidable. The greater part of one's 
weight is lifted by the Arabs at each arm ; and when one comes to a 
four feet step, or a broken ledge, there is a third Arab behind. When 
we arrived at a sort of recess, broken in the angle, my guides sported 
two of their Enghsh words, crying out " Half-way !" with great glee. 
The last half was easier than the first; and I felt, what proved to be 
true, that both must be easier than the coming down. I arrived second, 
and was kindly welcomed to that extraordinary spot by ^Ir. E. Mrs. Y. 
appeared presently after; and lastly, Mr. Y. ; — all in good spirits. 

I was agreeably surprised to find at the top, besides blocks standing 
up which gave us some shade, a roomy and even platform, where we 



THE PYRAMIDS. 



219 



might sit and write, and gaze abroad, and enjoy ourselves, without even 
seeing over the edge, unless we wished it. There was only the lightest 
possible breeze, just enough to fan our faces, without disturbing us. 
The reason of our ascending the Pyramid first, before going into it, was 
that we might take advantage of an hour of calm, and avoid the incon- 
venience of the wind which might spring up at noon. And most for- 
tunate we were in our weather, and in all other particulars. It was a 
glorious season, — full of new delight, without drawback;' — for I now 
began to think I might perhaps see the inside of the Pyramid too. 

Here are my notes of what we saw from the top ; — a height of 480 
feet. " Bearings by compass. In a line from us to the North, the 
hager (sandy plain) joins the fertile land, a blue stream flowing between 
them, and the line being wavy, and having a sprinkling of palms to- 
wards the North. In this northern direction, the green plain extends 
to the furthest horizon, and over to Cairo eastwards. It is dotted with 
villages, — clusters of brown houses among palms, — and watered with 
blue thread-like canals, and showing a faint line of causeway here and 
there. — E. by N., stands up the citadel of Cairo, the city stretching 
north-westwards from it. Behind the city, some way round to the 
N.N.E., is a low ridge of sandy hills: and the other way, southwards, 
the Mokuttam range, which looks higher the higher one mounts. 
Round from hence are sandy hills, with alluvion and canals between 
them and us, as far as the S.E., where the Nile wanders away, and 
the Abooseer Pyramids rise. S.S.E. are the Sakkara Pyramids ; and 
from them, round the rest of the landscape, all is desert, — terribly arid 
and glaring. In the midst of the sand, a train of camels, wonderfully 
diminutive, is winding along, and a few brown Arab tents are pitched, 
not far from the foot of the Pyramid, Off our S.W. corner is the 
Second Pyramid, standing in its sunken area, surrounded by walls, and 
showing by the casing that is left how much finer these Pyramids must 
have looked before they were so dismantled. — Beyond this, lies the 
little one." — This was what we saw; and long we gazed in every 
direction: — most pathetically perhaps to the South, where we had seen 
and left so much ; or over into the Delta, which we should enter no 
more, and which lay so rich and lovely between our eyes and the 
horizon, that it seemed to be melting-away. We began letters to friends 
at home, drank some water, intrepidly carried up by a little Arab girl; 
mounted the highest block, to get as near the sky as we could ; and 
then found that we really must be going down. 

The descent was fatiguing; but not at all alarming. Between step- 
ping, jumping, and sliding, with full reliance on the strength and care 
of the guides, the descent may be easily accomplished in ten minutes ; 
— as far, that is, as the height of the entrance to the Pyramid, which 
is some way from the bottom. We had bargained before starting that 
we should not be asked for baksheesh "while going up the Pyramid." 
Our guides took this literally, and began begging, the moment we put 
our feet upon the summit. And all the way down, my guides never 
let me alone, though they knew I had no money about me. They 
were otherwise extremely kind, giving me the benefit of their other 



220 



EASTERN LIFE. 



two words of English. On my jumping down a particularly high block, 
they patted me on the back, crying, with approving nods, "Ah! ah ! 
good morning; good morning!" I joined my party at the beautiful 
entrance to the Pyramid, where a large assemblage of Arabs was ranged 
on the rising stones opposite to us, hke a hill-side congregation waiting 
for the preacher. 

I resolved that morning not to be induced by any pleasure or triumph 
of the hour to tell people that it is very easy to go up and into the Py- 
ramid. To determined and practised people it is easy ; but not, pro- 
bably, to the majority. I would not recommend any one to do it of 
whose nerve I was not sure. To the tranquil, the inside of the Pyra- 
mid is sufficiently airy and cool for the need of the hour. But it is a 
dreadful place in which to be seized with a panic : and no woman 
should go who cannot trust herself to put down panic by reason. 
There is absolutely nothing to fear but from one's self; no danger of 
bad falls, or of going astray, or of being stifled. The passages are slip- 
pery : but there are plenty of notches ; and a fall could hardly be dan- 
gerous — unless at one place — the entrance upon the passage to the 
King's Chamber. We knew beforehand that there were air-passages 
from that chamber to the outside ; and when I walked about before ex- 
amining the place, and questioned my senses, I was surprised to find 
how little oppressive heat, and how much air there really was. The 
one danger is from the impression upon the senses of the solidity and 
vastness of the stone structure in such darkness. Almost any nerves 
may be excused for giving way under the sight of that passage and 
that chamber; — the whole, even the roof, being constructed of blocks 
of dark granite, so joined as that the edge of a penknife could not be 
inserted between them. The passage runs up, a steep inclined plane, 
with its hues on either hand, and its notches in front, retiring almost to 
a vanishing point, other grooves and projections high up the side walls 
apparently coming down to the same vanishing point, and all closed in 
by the ponderous ceiling, at such a height as to be well nigh lost in 
gloom. The torches of the Arabs glare near the eye, and perplex the 
vision by their fitful shining on the granite walls; and at the same 
time, the hghts in advance or far behind are like waving glow-worm 
sparks. There is nothing else like it ; — no catacomb or cavern in the 
world ; there never was, and surely there never will be. I have spent 
the greater part of two days in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky ; a 
place generally considered awful enough: but compared with this, it 
was like a drawing-room to a cellar. The fantastic character of its 
walls and roofs takes off from the impression of its vastness and gloom. 
Here, the symmetry and finish so deepen the gloom as to make this 
seem like a fit prison-house for fallen angels. Notwithstanding the 
plain view we obtained in the chamber of the enormous longitudinal 
blocks of the ceiling, the impression was less tremendous than in the 
descending passage, from the inferior vastness. There is nothing but 
the structure itself to be seen, except the sarcophagus near one end. 
It is sadly broken : but it still rings like a bell, when struck on the 
side. The granite is blackened by time ; but its grain is seen where 



THE PYRAMIDS* 



221 



it has been chipped by those who were in search of the air-holes. The 
prodigious portcuJHses of granite in the passage were more visible to 
us in going down than in ascending: and how they came there was 
an oppressive speculation in itself. It must be remembered that this 
structure, with its wonderful art and bewildering grandeur, was the. 
work of the men of five thousand years ago. It dates from the earlier 
part of the First Period, and is the oldest monument known to exist in 
the world. If this is, to us, the beginning of the Arts — this, which 
manifests the existence of so many appliances of art unknown to us 
now, how are we to speculate on what went before? and how com- 
pletely do w^e find ourselves thrown out in all our notions of the dura- 
tion of the human race ! 

On returning, two of our party had had enough of Pyramid search- 
ing. I and another had not ; and we proceeded to the Queen's Cham- 
ber, along the passage, above which we had ascended to the King's. 
This passage was not so low as we had expected. It only required us 
to walk stooping. The chief interest about the Glueen's Chamber is 
from its being under the apex of the Pyramid ; which the King's is 
not. Its ceiling is on this account pointed, like the great entrance. 
There are also five small, rough chambers above it, evidently put there 
to lessen the superincumbent weight. Though this chamber is smaller 
than the King's, it seems to be distinguished by being under the apex; 
and also by a niche, rather elaborately wrought. A pit has been opened 
below this niche, by searchers, and the rubbish thrown into a corner. 
Sir G. Wilkinson wishes that, if further search is made here for the 
king's body, it should be by looking under this niche. My great de- 
sire would be to have the Pyramid explored down to the lowest part 
where any traces of works could be found. Works carried down so 
low must have some purpose ; and it might be well worth our while to 
discover what. It is not satisfactory to my mind to suppose the "sub- 
terranean structures" intended merely to let the workmen out, after 
they had closed the upper passage with its granite portcullis. The 
great difficulty, in exploring the Pyramid — after the expense and toil 
of getting to work at all — is from the wonderful way in which these 
ancient builders closed the passages. Their huge granite portcullises, 
blocking up the way, are almost insuperable. It is hard to distinguish 
them from other blocks, and to guess when there is a passage behind ; 
and then it is very hard to get round them. I have a strong impres- 
sion myself that, after all the wonders our pains-taking and disinterested 
antiquarian travelers have laid open, there is much more behind, and 
that the exploration of the Pyramid is only just begun. If it be true 
that some one fired a pocket-pistol within the Pyramid, and that the 
echoes were countless — the reverberation going on for an astonishing 
length of time — it seems as if the edifice might be honey-combed with 
chambers. But for these unmanageable granite portcullises, what 
might we not learn ! 

It becomes us, however, to be grateful for what we have learned. 
Colonel Howard Vyse has laid the world under great obligations by his 
generous and laborious exertions. He made, among many discoveries, 



222 



EASTERN LIFE. 



one of inestimable importance. He found inscribed in the Pyramid, in 
the most antique style, the names of the Pharaohs who raised these 
edifices : and they turn out to be the same given by Herodotus and 
Manetho. It is now ascertained, beyond all doubt, that these Pyramids 
are the work of Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty ;— that is, of kings early 
succeeding Menes, and living near the beginning of the First Period of 
Egyptian history. 

I suppose every one knows the account given by Herodotus of the 
building of this pyramid : — how Cheops closed the temples, stopped 
the sacrifices, and made everybody work for him : — how some quar- 
ried the stone in the Arabian hills, and others conveyed it to the river 
and over a bridge of boats; and others drew it to the spot where it was 
wanted : — and how it could be carried and mounted only by a causeway 
which of itself took ten years to construct, and which Avas a fine work, 
with its polished stones and figures of animals engraved on them : — 
how 100,000 men were employed at a time, and were relieved by the 
same number at the end of three months : how, besides the ten years 
occupied by the causeway, much was required for leveling the rock 
on which the edifice stands, and twenty years for the building of the 
pyramid itself: — how a machine, made of short pieces of wood, was 
placed on every step, as the work proceeded, to raise the stones for the 
step above; and how the filling in of these gradations, forming the last 
smooth surface, was begun from the top : — how this surface bore en- 
graved, so that Herodotus himself saw it, an inscription which told the 
expense of the vegetables eaten by the laborers during the progress of 
the work; and how confounded the traveler declares himself to be, 
judging from the sum spent in vegetables, at the thought of the expendi- 
ture further necessary for the rest of the food and the clothes of the 
workmen, and their iron tools, during the long course of years required 
for the whole series of works, — amongst which, by the way, he in- 
cludes the " subterranean structures" which he again mentions, as made 
by the king, " for purpose of sepulture, in an island formed by the 
waters of the Nile, which he introduced into them by a canal."* 

All this narrative, thus briefly glanced at, is known to everybody 
who cares about Egypt : and everybody has no doubt been struck by 
this testimony to the use of iron tools, and the existence of polished 
stones, machinery, writing and engraving, between five and six thousand 
years ago. — But everybody may not know what evidence we have of 
the solidity and extraordinary vastness of these works, in the impossi- 
bihty which has been found of taking them to pieces. This evidence 
we have through our useful middle age witness, Abdallatif, whose book 
is so little known that I may be rendering a service by translating some 
passages relating to his visits to the pyramids in or about A. D. 1190. 

Abdallatif begins with the same thought which suggested the noble 
saying, "All things dread Time: but Time dreads the Pyramids." He 
says — 

"The form which has been adopted in the construction of the Py- 



Herod. II. 124. 



THE PYRAMIDS. 



223 



ramids, and the solidity which has been given them are well worthy 
of admiration. It is to their form that they owe the advantage of hav- 
ing resisted the hostility of centuries : or rather, it seems as if it were 
Time which has resisted the opposition of these eternal edifices. In- 
deed, when we meditate deeply on the construction of the Pyramids, 
we are compelled to acknowledge that men of the greatest genius have 
here employed in combination their best powers ; and that the subtlest 
minds have exhausted their deepest resources ; that the most enlightened 
souls have exercised in profusion all the abilities that they possessed 
which could be applied to these constructions; and that the wisest 
theory of geometry has employed all its means to produce these wonders, 
as the last point of astonishment which it was possible to reach. Thus 
we may say that these edifices speak to us now of those who reared 
them, teach us their history, open to us in an intelligible manner the 
progress which they had made in the sciences, and the excellence 
of their abilities: — in a word, they put us in possession of the life and 
actions of the men of those days."*' After telling how the Pyramids 
are placed with a regard to the points of the compass, and how this 
breaks the force of the wind, and what the gross measurements are, he 
goes on: — "Their pyramidal figure is truncated; and the summit 
offers thereby a level of ten cubits every way. Here is a thing which 
I myself observed. When I visited them, there was in our party an 
archer, who let fly an arrow in the direction of the perpendicular height 
of one of these Pyramids, and in that of its thickness (its base) : and 
the arrow fell a little short of midway. t We learned that in the neigh- 
boring village there were people accustomed to mount the pyramid, 
who did it without any difficulty. We sent for one of these men ; and 
for a trifle which we gave him, he set off up the pyramid, as we should 
to mount a staircase, and even quicker, without putting off either his 
shoes or his garments, which were very ample. I had desired him to 
measure, with his turban, the area at the top, when he got there. When 
he came down, we took the measure of his turban, as it answered to 
that of the area at the summit. We found it to be eleven cubits, by 
the measure of the original cubit." — It does not seem to have occurred 
to the grave physician to go up himself. It is a pity that he could not 
know that ladies would accomplish the feat, seven centuries after him. 
If he had looked abroad from the summit, what would he have done for 
words to express his raptures ! He goes on to show how much less he 
dared than we: — 

" One of these two pyramids is open, and offers an entrance by which 
the interior may be visited. This opening leads to narrow passages, to 
conduits which go down to a great depth, and to wells and precipices, 
as we are assured by such persons as have courage to explore them : 
for there are many people who are tempted by a foolish avarice and 
chimerical hopes into the interior of this edifice. They plunge into 

* Relation de I'Egypte, Livre I. ch. 4. 

t It is well known tiiat the ground covered by the Great Pyramid is equal to the 
area of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and 50 feet over, every way ; — say, Lincoln Inn Fields 
and the row of surrounding houses. 



224 



EASTERN LIFE. 



deep recesses, and come at last to a place where they find it impossible 
to penetrate further. As for the most frequented and ordinarily used 
passage, it is a glacis which leads to the upper part of the pyramid, 
where there is a square chamber; and in this chamber a sarcophagus 
of stone." 

Up to a recent date, there have been doubts whether the pyramid 
was open so long ago as this, and whether, therefore, the tradition was 
true which declares that Caliph .Mamoon opened it, somewhere about 
A.D. S20. It is clear that in Abdallatifs time there was no novelty in 
its standing open : and there seems no reason to doubt the narrative 
given by Arab writers of the openino; by Caliph Mamoon. One of 
them, Abdel Hokm. declares that a statue resembling a man (a mummy- 
case, no doubtj, was found in the sarcophagus ; and within the statue, 
a human body, with a breast-plate of gold and jewels, bearing written 
characters which no one understood. Abdallatif says — 

" The opening by which the interior of the pyramid is reached at 
this day is not the original entrance: it is a hole begun at random, and 
made by force. It is said it was the Caliph Mamoon who made it. 
The greater part of our company entered it, and went up to the higher 
chamber. When they came down, they gave marvelous accounts of 
what they had seen; and they said that this passage was so full of 
bats and their dirt that it was almost stopped up: that the bats were 
nearly as large as pigeons; and that there were to be seen in the upper 
part, open spaces and windows which seemed to have been intended 
to admit air and light. — In another visit which I made to the Pyramids, 
1 entered this interior passage with several persons, and went about 
two-thirds of the way along it: but having become insensible through 
the fear which struck me in this ascent, I came down again, half dead. 

«' These pyramids are constructed of great stones, from ten to twenty 
cubits long, and two or three cubits m the breadth and thickness. 
The most admirable particular of the whole is the extreme nicety with 
which these stones have been prepared and adjusted. Their adjust- 
ment is so precise that not even a needle or a hair can be inserted be- 
tween any two of them. They are joined by a cement laid on to the 
thickness of a sheet of paper. I cannot tell what this mortar is made 
of, It beins: of a substance entirely unknown to me. These stones are 
covered with ivriting in that unknoivn character whose import is at 
this day wholly unknown. I have not met in Egypt with any person 
who could say'that he knew, even by hearsay, of any one who under- 
stood this character. These inscriptions are so multitudinous, that if 
those only which are seen on the surface of these two pyramids ivere 
copied upon paper, more them ten thousand pages would be filled icith 
them:' 

For "pa2:e5," Pococke here translates "books." When we remem- 
ber that Abdallatif is telling us what he himself saw, we cannot but 
admit this particular of his simple narrative. He goes on: 

I have read in some books of the ancient Sabeans, that, of these 
two pyramids, one is the tomb of Agathodemon, and the other that of 
Hermes. These are, they say, two great prophets; but Agathodemon 



THE PYRAMIDS. 



226 



is the older and greater of the two. They say that from all the coun- 
tries of the world, people come in pilgrimage to these two pyramids.— 
In my great work, I have enlarged upon this subject ; and I have re- 
lated what others have said of these edifices. To that account I refer 
those who desire further details. Here, I hmit myself to what I have 
myself seen. 

" When MeHc-alaziz Othman-ben-Yousouf had succeeded his father, 
he let himself be persuaded by some of his courtiers, — foolish people, 
— to demolish these pyramids : and they began with the red* pyramid, 
which is the third and smallest of the three great pyramids. 

"The Sultaun sent there his sappers, miners and quarrymen, under 
the superintendence of some of the principal officers and first Emirs 
of his court, and gave them orders to destroy it. To execute these 
orders, they established their camp near the pyramid: they collected 
there a multitude of laborers from all quarters, and maintained them 
at great cost. They remained there eight entire months, occupied, 
with all their people, in executing their commission, carrying away, 
each day, after extreme exertion and exhaustion, two or three stones. 
Some pushed them from above with wedges and levers, while others 
drew them away from the base with ropes and cables. Whenever one 
of these stones fell, it made a fearful noise, which echoed far off, shook 
the earth, and made the hills tremble. By its fall, it was buried in the 
sand; and then, great efforts were made to remove it ; after which the 
people wrought grooves for the wedges to enter ; and thus the stones 
were split into several pieces : — then each fragment was placed upon 
a car, to be carried to a mountain a httle way off, and thrown out at its 
foot. 

" After the company had remained a long time encamped on this 
spot, when their pecuniary means were all expended, while their trouble 
and fatigue went on increasing, and their resolution growing weaker, 
day by day, and their strength was utterly exhausted, they were ob- 
liged ignominiously to quit their enterprise. Far from obtaining the 
result they had anticipated, and succeeding in their design, they ended 
by doing nothing but spoiling the pyramid, and evidencing their own 
powerlessness. This passed in the year 593, (a. d. 1196.) When one 
now looks at the stones brought down in the course of the demolition, 
one is persuaded that the pyramid has been destroyed from its foun- 
dation : but when, on the other hand, one looks up at the pyramid, one 
beHeves that it has suffered no injury whatever, and that nothing has 
happened but the paring off of a portion of the casing on one of its 
sides. 

"Observing one day what extremely heavy work it was to remove a 
single stone, I addressed one of the superintendents who was directing 
the workmen, and put this question to him — ' If any one offered you a 
thousand pieces of gold to replace one of these stones, and adjust it as 
it was before, do you think you could accomplish it?' His answer was 



15 



* So called from its being made of red granite. 



226 



EASTERN LIFE. 



that if many times as much was offered, they could not do such a thing; 
and this he affirmed with an oath."* 

I fear that all such descriptions are thrown away, in regard to the 
object of giving to the readers of them any idea of what the Pyramids 
are. They are useful as records, however, and extremely interesting to 
travelers in going over the ground. As for the impression, — there is 
nothing like the momentary sensation of seeing the blue daylight at the 
top of the entrance passage, when one is on one's way out. More real 
astonishment is felt at that moment than from reading all the descrip- 
tions of all authors. 

After resting for luncheon on a block on the east side of the Pyra- 
mids, we visited some tombs, very interesting from their extreme anti- 
quity, but too much like those of Benee Hasan to justify description 
here. The preparations for feasts, numbering stock, &c., go on here 
as elsewhere, showing that people lived between five and six thousand 
years ago, much as they do now. It was hereabouts that that precious 
ring was found which ought to be in the British Museum, but which 
remains in the hand of Dr. Abbott, at Cairo — the gold ring of Cheops, 
with his cartouche cut upon it. In Dr. Abbott's possession, too, are some 
gold ornaments with "Menes" marked upon them. Treasures of such 
singular value as these should surely be national property. 

And now the time was come for visiting the Sphinx. What a mon- 
strous idea was it from which this monster sprang! True as I think 
Abdallatif 's account of it, and just as is his admiration, I feel that a 
stranger either does not see the Sphinx at all, or he sees it as a night- 
mare. When we first passed it, I saw it onl}'' as a strange-looking 
rock ; an oversight which could not have occurred in the olden time, 
when the head bore the royal helmet or the ram's horns. Now I was 
half-afraid of it. The full serene gaze of its round face, rendered ugly 
by the loss of the nose, which was a very handsome feature of the old 
Egyptian face — this full gaze and the stony calm of its attitude almost 
turn one to stone. So life-like — so huge — so monstrous — it is really a 
fearful spectacle. I saw a man sitting in a fold of the neck, as a fly 
might settle on a horse's mane. In that crease he reposed, while far 
over his head extended the vast penthouse of the jaw, and above that, 
the dressed hair on either side the face — each bunch a mass of stone 
which might crush a dwelling house. In its present state, its propor- 
tions cannot be obtained; but Sir G. W^ilkinson tells us,t "Pliny says it 
measured from the belly to the highest part of the head sixty-three feet; 
its length was one hundred and forty-three; and, the circumference of 
its head round the forehead one hundred and two feet — all cut out in 
the natural rock, and worked smooth." Fancy the long well-opened 
eyes, in such proportion as this — eyes which have gazed unwinking 
into vacancy, while mighty Pharaohs, and Hebrew law-givers, and 
Persian princes, and Greek philosophers, and Anthony with Cleopatra 
by his side, and Christian anchorites, and Arab warriors, and European 

* Relation de TEgypte, Livre I., ch. 4. 
t Modern Egypt and Thebes, 1. 356, 



THE SPHYNX. 



227 



men of science, have been brought hither in succession by the unpaus- 
ing ages to look up into those eyes — so full of meaning, though so fixed! 
We have here a record of the Egyptian complexion, or of the Egyptians' 
own notion of it, as well as of the characteristic features of the race. 
There is red paint on the face, of the same tint as the complexions in 
the tombs. The face is (supposing the nose restored) much like the 
Berber countenance. The long mild eye, the thick but not protuberant 
lips, (lips like Malibran's, and like no others that I ever saw in Europe,) 
and the projecting jaw, with the intelligent, gentle expression of the 
whole face, are very like what one sees in Nubia at every village. 
That man sitting in the fold of the neck was a happy accident. It en- 
abled one to estimate proportions, when looking up from below, and to 
learn how it was that religious processions marched up between its 
paws to the temple sheltered by its breast. I could see how the sanc- 
tuary and altar of sacrifice might very well stand there, so towered over 
by the neck and head as that the savor of the sacrifi.ces might rise 
straight up into its nostrils. The granite tablet above this altar is visi- 
ble, peeping out of the sand in the hollow. The ridge of the back is 
above ground, and I walked along it from the neck to the root of the 
tail. If only the paws could be kept uncovered, it would much improve 
our conception of this strange work — perhaps, as my journal observes, 
the strangest object I ever saw. 

While riding away, I turned to give a last look, and was struck with 
the ugliness of the scene. The Pyramids lessened in height from 
nortti to south, and were scattered about without evident plan; tombs 
yawned in the yellow rocks; the Sphinx lay low, and seemed to belong 
to nothing; and the whole vast, desolate circuit of monuments was in- 
cumbered by rubbish. This was my last glimpse into the ancient 
world, except that I had the obelisk at Heliopolis yet to see. This was 
my last clear view into the times of the vanished race. As I turned 
my face towards Cairo, the cloud curtain was again drawn over the 
jiving and moving scene which I had studied for so long, and anything 
more that I might learn must be by thought and not by sight. 

The amount of what one does learn by the eye is very great — really 
astonishing in the case of a people whose literature is lost, instead oi 
remaining as an indication of what one is to look for, and a commentary 
on what one sees. What do we not owe to their turn for engraving 
and painting! Here is a people remaining only, as one may say-j^n 
the abstract! — living only in the ideas they have bequeathed to us, and 
in the undecayed works of their hands. No one of that great race sur- 
vives; we have their corpses in plenty, but not a breathing man left of 
them all. We do not know what their complexion was; their language 
is lost, except as studious men pick it up, word by word, with painful 
uncertainty, from an obscure cypher. But, phantoms as they are to us, 
how much do they teach us ! 

They teach us to be modest and patient in regard to our knowledge 
of the ancient world, by showing us that while we have been talking 
confidently of the six thousand years of human existence, and about 
who was who in the earliest days, we have in reahty known nothing 



228 



EASTERN LIFE. 



about it. They rebuke us sufficiently in showing us that at that time 
men were living very much as we do, without some knowledge that we 
have gained, but in possession of some arts which we have not. They 
confound us by their mute exhibitions of their iron tools and steel ar- 
mor, their great range of manufactures, and their feasts and sports, so 
like our own. In their kitchens they decant wine by a syphon, and 
strew their sweet cakes with seeds, and pound their spices in a mortar. 
In the drawing-room, they lounge on chaises-longues, and the ladies 
knit and net as we do, and darn better than we can. I saw at Dr. Ab- 
bott's a piece of mending left unfinished several thousand years ago, 
which any Englishwoman might be satisfied with or proud of. In the 
nursery the little girls had dolls — jointed dolls, with bunchy hair and 
long eyes — as our dolls have blue eyes and fair tresses. And the ba- 
bies had, not the woolly bow-wow dogs which yelp in our nurseries, 
but little wooden crocodiles with snapping jaws. In the country we 
see the agriculturist taking stock, and in the towns the population 
divided into castes, subject to laws, and living under a theocracy, long 
before the supposed time of the Deluge. There is enough here to 
teach us some humility and patience about the true history of the 
world. 

We almost lose sight of the evidences of their ways that they have 
left us in recognizing the Ideas that they have recorded and transmit- 
ted. Here they were, nearly two thousand years before the birth of 
Abraham, worshiping One Supreme God, and owning him for their 
king, appointing for his agent and chief servant as their ruler, a priest 
whom they called his son. They recognized his moral government — 
always strictly a moral government, through how many hands soever it 
might be administered — whether those of his personified attributes, or 
those of his human instruments. The highest objects set before these 
people were purity of life and rectitude of conduct. Their highest 
aspirations were directed to the glory and favor of God in this life, and 
acceptance by him hereafter. Their conceptions of death were that it 
was a passage to an eternal existence, where a divine benefactor, sent 
to dispense the mercies of the Supreme, had gone before them, having 
submitted to death, in order to overcome the power of evil, and who 
had, therefore, been raised from among the dead, when his probation 
in Hades was ended, and made the eternal Judge of the living and the 
dead. Those whom he judged favorably had their names written in 
the book of Life, and were brought to taste of the tree of Life, which 
would make them to be as gods ; after which they were to enjoy such 
bliss as it has not entered into men's hearts to conceive. The wicked 
were meanwhile to undergo shame and anguish till they had expiated 
the very last sin, or were to be destroyed. 

They believed the creation to have taken place as they annually saw 
re-creation take place. They said that the Spirit of the Supreme 
moved on the face of the waters; and that the dry land appeared at 
his bidding, yielding vegetation first, and then animals. They believed 
in a substantial firmament, wherein the sun and moon were placed, 
which were privileged to travel, with the spirits of the virtuous in their 



ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 



229 



train, through a long series of Mansions in the great abode of the Su- 
preme. They taught that every mind, whether of man or brute, was 
an emanation from the Supreme ; and that the body was only its abode 
and instrument ; the soul being, from its nature and derivation, immor- 
tal. 

Such were the Ideas transmitted to other countries and to future races 
by this very ancient people. That such were their ideas, we know by 
a far surer medium than tradition — though that also is not wanting. By 
the hearing of the ear, and the sympathy of the mind, they transmitted 
these Ideas in their living force. By their sculptures, their paintings 
and their legends, they immutably recorded them. 

All knowledge is sacred. All truth is divine. It is not for us to 
mix up passion and prejudice with our perception of new facts. We 
may not like to be perplexed by new knowledge which throws us out 
of some notions which we took for knowledge before. We are apt to 
feel our own spiritual privileges lessened by its appearing that they 
were held for many ages before the time which we had supposed. It 
might be enough to leave the minds of students of the past to subside 
and grow tranquil, (as minds always do, sooner or later,) in the subhrae 
presence of facts ; but I would just ask whether the great guiding Ideas 
of mankind are the more or the less venerable for having wrought for 
some thousands of years longer than we had imagined ; and whether 
it is or is not a testimony to the power of those Ideas that they raised 
into spiritual light a race which thereby became the greatest in the an- 
cient world, preserved their empire through a longer duration than that 
of any other known people, and were made the source of enlighten- 
ment to nations then and still unborn. If, weak in our partial know- 
ledge, and in the prejudices of our whole lives, we need reconciling to 
the facts of the Egyptian history of Mind, I think these testimonies to 
the power and saving character of these venerable Ideas may have a 
cheering efficacy, and can have no other. 

Here, as I said, the volume of ancient Egyptian history was closed 
to us. We had Cairo before our eyes as we rode away, and found let- 
ters from England on board our boat — happy letters which were a re- 
buke to our anxiety — at least I may say this for myself. 

We were not injuriously fatigued by our most successful excursion; 
rather tired in the evening, and very stiff the next day ; but nobody 
ill, and everybody well satisfied. It was no satisfaction to any of us 
that our Nile voyage was over ; but this was an inevitable misfortune ; 
and we bore it as well as we could. 



230 



EASTERN LIFE, 



CHAPTER XX. 

INUNDATION OF THE NILE.— FAMINE IN EGYPT. 

We hear so much of the regularity of the overflow of the Nile, that 
we are apt to forget that it may fail, or to contemplate the consequences 
in such a case. It is true, we read of the seven years of famine in 
Joseph's time ; but we think of that as a kind of miracle, and do not 
ask whether such a misfortune ever happened again, when a less 
sagacious and politic minister than Joseph was at the head of affairs. 
There is some information extant about this ; and it may be of sufficient 
interest to justify us in dwelling upon it a little. 

It is amusing to observe how, according to Herodotus, the Egyptians 
and Greeks pitied each other for their respective ways of having their 
lands watered. The priests told Herodotus of a time when a rise of 
eight cubits sufficed to water the land below Memphis ; whereas "now," 
he says,* "if the river does not rise sixteen cubits,! or at least fifteen, 
it does not cover the fields. If the land continues to rise in the same pro- 
portion,"— (a proportion which he calculated on mistaken dates, as the 
event has shown,) "and to receive the same augmentations as hitherto, 
the Nile no longer covering it with its waters, it seems to me that the 
Egyptians who dwell below Lake Moeris, and in other districts, and 
especially in what is called the Delta, must continually experience at 
last the same fate as that with which they suppose the Greeks to be 
threatened, sooner or later; for, having learned that the whole of Greece 
is watered by rains, and not by the inundation of the rivers, as in their 
country, they say that if the Greeks should ever be disappointed of 
their hopes, they would run the risk of perishing miserably by famine. 
By this they mean to convey that if, instead of raining in Greece, there 
should come a drought, they would die of hunger, because they have 
no other resource than the waters of the sky. — This reflection of the 
Egyptians upon the Greeks is just ; but now let us see to what extremity 
they themselves may be reduced. If it should happen, as I said be- 
fore, that the region below Memphis, which is that which receives ac- 
cumulations, should go on rising as it has done hitherto, must it not 
certainly happen that the Egyptians who inhabit it must experience 
the horrors of famine, since it does not rain in their country, and the 
river can no longer overspread their fields? But there is nobody now, 
in the rest of Egypt, or even in the whole world, who obtains a harvest 

• Herod. II. 13. 

■f" The priests were possibly speakiiig of a different measure from the cubit of the 
time of Herodotus. The cubit originally signified the length from the bend of the 
elbow to the end of the middle finger. It is believed that among the Hebrews there 
were two cubit-measures; — one of IS inches, and the other of 21 inches. Sir G. 
Wilkinson gives the cubit at the Nilometer at Elephantine as measuring if ft. — i. e. 
19^ inches. There were 28 digits in a cubit. 



INUNDATION OF THE NILE. 



231 



with less care and toil." — After all these wise and kind apprehensions 
on each other's account, the people of neither of the two countries have 
seen the other lapse into desert, or the inhabitants exterminated by a 
permanent failure of water. Seedtime and harvest have not yet ceased. 
— In Egypt, however, they have intermitted ; and terrible have those 
seasons been. Abdallatif's account of one of them is dreadful to read, 
at the end of nearly seven centuries. 

One is filled with astonishment at the constancy of the overflow, and 
the regularity of its amount, when one learns what are the consequences 
of a small diminution or excess of the ordinary quantity; and perhaps 
it is as perplexing to men of science as to other people thai such regu- 
larity should accrue from any such sources as those to which the inun- 
dation of the Nile has yet been attributed. If the Messrs. Abbadie 
should return in safety to Europe, to tell us what they beheve they 
have discovered respecting the fountains of the Nile, we may know 
something ere long which may relieve our perplexity. Meantime, it 
appears to us one of the chief wonders of the natural world that the 
mountains of Abyssinia should so punctually gather the clouds about 
them, and entice the rains, as to send out streams of the same force, 
which shall water two thousand miles of country to within a few inches 
of the same height, and a few hours of the same time, year by year, for 
as many ages as are known to man. 

The highest point reached by the inundation, and very rarely 
reached, is a little above nineteen cubits. In this case, much cultiva- 
ble land remains so long submerged that the sowing cannot take place ; 
and it is as barren as a desert for that year, while some spots which 
are ordinarily dry yield a harvest for once. Of course, there is a great 
destruction of dwellings and of stock in this case. When the rise 
reaches eighteen cubits, there is great rejoicing, for the produce is then 
sufficient for two years' consumption, after the government dues are 
paid. When it reaches sixteen cubits, there is enough produce for the 
wants of the year ; and this was called, in Abdallatif's time, "the Sul- 
taun's flood," because then the Sultaun claimed his taxes. Below six- 
teen cubits, there is more or less scarcity. In such a case the south 
wind has prevailed: and in good years, the north. 

The lowest Nile ever known seems to have been that of a. d. 966, 
when the waters rose only to twelve cubits, seventeen digits: and the 
next lowest was in a. d. 1 199, when it rose only four digits higher. For 
four centuries before the earliest of these dates, the Nile had only six 
times failed to reach fourteen cubits ; and about twenty times only had 
it stopped short of fifteen cubits. The inundation begins about the 
twenty-fifth of June, and reaches its height in three months. It re- 
mains stationary about twelve days, and then begins to subside. 

Niebuhr gives a full account of popular methods of divination as to 
what the Nile will be pleased to do that year. The Mohammedans 
believe, he says,* that the fall of a drop of water from heaven upon a 
place in Abyssinia is the cause of the inundation ; and that this drop 



* Voyage en Arabie, torn. I. p. 104. 



232 



EASTERN LIFE. 



falls on the night of the 17th and 18th of June. As the Mohammedan 
months vary, they use the Coptic time for this calculation. On that 
night, about every second house in Cairo had, in Niebuhr's time, a 
piece of paste laid out upon the roof ; and if it was found heavier in the 
morning than at night, it was a settled matter that the Drop had fallen 
in Abyssinia, and that there would be a good Nile. We should sup- 
pose this to be owing to a heavy dew : but the people would have it 
that it was of no consequence whether the paste was laid out within 
the house or on the roof. Another method was to expose equal weights 
of dry Nile soil and water ; if, in the morning, the earth had sucked 
up all the water, it would be a sterile year; if any remained, there 
would be a good flood. Niebuhr tried this experiment repeatedly; 
and there was always water remaining : whence he drew the conclu- 
sion that the soil of the valley will not absorb its own weight of water. 
Another popular method of divination was to set out on the house-tops 
at night, little paper-boxes containing a small portion of wheat. Each 
box was inscribed with the name of a Coptic month; and all were of 
equal weight. The box w^hich was heaviest in the morning shovv^ed 
in what month the inundation would reach its height. As was natural, 
the people tried to learn a little more while they were about it ; and 
some fortune-telling was joined with the other experiments. The best 
informed people laughed at the whole matter as an amusement of the 
women : but nevertheless, about every other house in Cairo had some- 
thing laid out upon its roof on the night of the 17th of June. The 
Christians were in no way behind the Mohammedans in their experi- 
ments. They had their paste and their Nile soil, and their calculations 
of uncertain times, connecting their observances, however, with their 
saints' days. They professed a caution greater than their neighbors 
thought of ; declaring that unless three of their experiments yielded the 
same result, none were to be relied on. 

The people dreaded falling stars at this time of year. Learned men 
said that if they all tended to the same point of the heavens, this indi- 
cated only what winds would prevail : and the winds are largely con- 
cerned in the inundation. Learned and ignorant seem to have agreed 
that if these meteors abounded in the whole sky, it was a forewarning 
of a low Nile ; and also of political troubles. In a. d. 902, fiery mete- 
ors filled the air : and lo ! the Nile rose only to thirteen cubits, and the 
dynasty of the Tooloonides was overthrown ; the last of them reigning 
only ten days. Again, in a. d. 912, the same signs occurred, and were 
followed by scarcity and civil war. Abdallatif observes, after quoting 
the chronicler who tells these things, " These are certainly very strong 
indications ; but they are common to all countries, and not peculiar to 
Egypt. But we observed the same things in this year (a. d. 1199). 
At the beginning of the year (Mohammedan) stars darted across the 
sky ; and at the end, the waters were very low : and in this same year, 
the Sovereign who ruled in Egypt was dethroned by his uncle Melic- 
aladel, after they had been at war." He tells us elsewhere, however, 
that an ambassador from Abyssinia brought to Cairo, in August of that 
year, a letter from his sovereign, (about appointing a new Patriarch in 



INUNDATION OF THE NILE. 



233 



the place of the one who had just died ;) in which letter it was stated 
that the rains had that season been very moderate ; and that this was 
the reason of the lowness of the Nile. 

It is a sign of a bad inundation if the waters of the river have a green 
tinge and a bad odor at the time of the visible rise of the flood. The 
aquatic mosses and vegetable fibres which occasion this corrupt state of 
the water ought to be carried away quickly by the force of the current 
sweeping through, and washing out, the stagnant pools and nooks of 
the damp shores. It is a bad sign if the current is so low and lazy as 
merely to float this corruption. In the first year of dearth of which 
Abdallatif gives an account, the water was insufferable to the taste and 
smell ; and all who could had recourse to well-water. He boiled the 
Nile water ; but that only made it worse : and when he let a portion 
stand in a narrow-necked bottle, and then took off' the scum, he found 
the water, though then clear as fetid as ever. This plague lasted, in 
that terrible year, all through June and July and part of August: and 
besides the putrid vegetable matter, there were worms and other crea- 
tures that swarm in stagnant water. Almost as soon as they were 
gone, the inundation reached its limit for that year. On the 9th of 
September, it stood no higher than twelve cubits, twenty-one digits ; 
and it then began to decline. The inhabitants could scarcely have had 
time to fill their cisterns, which they do when the waters have become 
red (as they call it) and not before : that is, when they bring down earth 
in suspension, instead of decayed vegetation. After filtering, or when 
the earth has subsided, the water of the Nile is the finest conceivable. 

In the time of Abdallatif, the people sat watching the rise of the 
waters, as at this day: and terrible must have been the consternation 
when it appeared, on the 9th of September, that the scanty flood was 
already subsiding. Many thousands were watching there, who would 
presently be beyond the reach of mortal hope or fear, listening for the 
voice of the crier who would never proclaim another inundation. I 
will give, from Abdallatif, some account of the state of Egypt this year, 
— believing his to be the only detailed history we have of such a season 
in Egypt; and certain that every one must feel interest in having pre- 
sentecl to him such a proof of the blessing that Joseph was to the nation 
of his time, in preserving them from such horrors as a single year of 
drought inevitably brings, when no preparation is made for it. I shall, 
however, omit the most horrible and disgusting details, as occasioning 
more pain than they would be worth to us in this place, though they 
could hardly be spared from their own. 

" Under these circumstances," says Abdallatif,* " the year presented 
itself as a monster whose wrath must annihilate all the resources of life, 
and ail the means of subsistence. There was no longer any hope of a 
further rise of the Nile; and already therefore the price of provisions 
had risen : the provinces were desolated by drought ; the inhabitants 
foresaw an inevitable scarcity; and the fear of famine excited tumul- 
tuous commotions among them. The inhabitants of the villages and 



* Relation de I'Egypte, Livre II. ch. 2. 



234 



EASTERN LIFE. 



country estates repaired to the great provincial towns : large numbers 

emigrated to Syria, Magreb, Hedjaz, and Yemen, where they dispersed 
themselves on every hand, as did formerly the descendants of Saba. 
There was also an infinite number who sought retreat in the towns of 
Misr* and Cairo, where they experienced a frightful famine and mor- 
tahty; for when the sun had entered Aries, the air had become corrupt, 
pestilence and a mortal contagion began to be felt ; and the poor, pressed 
by a continually increasing famine, ate carrion, corpses, dogs and the 
dung of animals. They went further, even devouring little children. 
It was not an uncommon thing to surprise people with infants roasted 
or boiled. The commandant of the city caused all who committed this 
crime to be burned alive, as well as those who ate that meat. I myself 
saw in a basket an infant that had been roasted. It was brought to the 
magistrate ; and with it a man and woman who were said to be its pa- 
rents, and whom the magistrate sentenced to be burned alive. 

"In the month of Ramadhan, a corpse was found at Misr, which 
had been stripped of its flesh for food, and whose legs were tied, like 
those of a sheep prepared for cooking. Galen desired in vain to obtain 
a sight of such a skeleton ; and there were no means that he did not 
attempt for the purpose. This spectacle has been no less sought by 
all who have devoted themselves to the study of anatomy. 

" When the poor began to eat human flesh, the horror and astonish- 
ment caused by the practice were such that these crimes were the ma- 
terial of every one's conversation ; and the subject seemed inexhaustible : 
but afterwards people became so accustomed to it, and such a relish 
began to spread for this detestable food, that some came to make it their 
ordinary meat, to eat it as a treat, and even to lay in a stock of it : dif- 
ferent ways of preparing this flesh were made known : and the use of 
it being once introduced, the custom extended into the provinces, so 
that there was no part of Egypt where it might not be met with. Then 
it no longer caused any surprise ; the horror which it had at first in- 
spired ceased to be felt ; and people spoke and heard of it as an indif- 
ferent and ordinary thing." 

In this indifference lay the best hope of the cessation of the practice ; 
for it is usually found that monstrous practices which arise out of ex- 
tremity spread like a diabolical fashion ; and the distracted minds which 
are shaken by affliction find a sort of relief in the excitement of des- 
perate practices: and when the strangeness and novelty are over, the 
habitual disgust and compunction are pretty sure to return. It appears 
in the later parts of Abdallatif's narrative that it was so in this instance. 
After citing some atrocious cases, he goes on to say — 

"There were children of the poor, some in infancy and some grow- 
ing up, who had no one to look after them and protect them, spread 
through all the quarters of the city, and in the narrowest streets, like 
locusts that are beaten down in the fields. Poor people, men and 

* By ^Nlisr, Abdallatif throughout means Old Cairo, originally called Fostat, It 
was built by the ^Mohammedan conqueror of Egypt (a. d. 038), on the site of the 
Egyptian Babylon, The founder made it the capital and royal residence, which it 
continued to be for about two centuries and a half. 



FAMINE IN EGYPT. 



235 



women, lay in wait for these wretched children, carried them off, and 
ate them. It was rarely that they could be detected in the very act, 
and when they were not on their guard. It was generally women who 
were so caught : a circumstance which, in my opinion, occurred only 
because women have less ingenuity ('finesse') than men, and cannot 
fly and hide themselves with so much readiness. In the space of a 
few days, as many as thirty women were burnt, every one of whom con- 
fessed that she had eaten several children. I saw one led before the 
magistrate, who had a roasted infant suspended from her neck. Two 
hundred stripes were inflicted upon her, to draw from her an avowal 
of her crime ; but no reply could be wrung from her. It even ap- 
peared as if she had lost all the faculties which characterize human 
nature. Then she was led away by force, and she expired in the 
street." 

Doubtless she was no longer human, but rendered brutish and idiotic 
by extremity. After telling how the bodies of the burnt criminals were 
eagerly sought, "as already cooked," and some other atrocities, our 
physician proceeds to relate the pecuhar dangers of his medical 
brethren — 

" Among the abandoned people, there were some who laid every sort 
of snare to surprise men, and to entrap them into their houses on false 
pretences. This was what happened to three physicians who were 

accustomed to visit me The third was summoned by 

a man to accompany him to a sick person who lived, he said, in the 
Schari (the great street). As they went along, the man gave alms of 
small coin ; and he said (out of the Kuran),// is to-day that there will 
be retribution, and a reward which shall double that that is given 
away. Let those who act, act in view of such a recompense. This was 
repeated so often, that the physician began to suspect some foul play. 
However, the good opinion he had of this man led him on ; and be- 
sides, the desire of gain actuated him; and therefore he permitted him- 
self to be introduced into a half-ruined mansion. Its appearance in- 
creased his alarm ; and he stopped upon the staircase, while his guide 
went before him, and opened the door. A comrade came to meet them, 
and said, 'After keeping us so long, you have brought us good game, 
I hope.' These words struck terror into the heart of the physician. 
He leaped through an open window which he happily perceived, into 
a stable. The owner of the stable came, and asked him what was the 
matter: but the physician took good care not to tell him, not venturing 
to trust him. Then the man said to him, ' I know about your adven- 
ture : the people who live here surprise men and kill them.' " 

It may be hoped that this was a mauvaise plaisanterie, appropriate 
to the time. But much that Abdallatif saw was only too real and indu- 
bitable. He says: 

" If we were to relate all the anecdotes of this kind that we have 
heard told, or have seen with our own eyes, we should run the risk of 
being suspected of exaggeration, or accused of a too copious gossip. 
All the facts which we have related as eye-witnesses, have come under 
our notice without any design on our part, and without our having gone 



236 



EASTERN LIFE. 



on purpose to the places where they were Hkely to happen : chance 
only made us witnesses of them; for, far from seeking them, we gene- 
rally avoided the sight of them, so great was our horror of such things. 
Those, on the other hand, who were in the house of the magistrate, to 
be present at these tragic scenes, saw cases of this sort, of every kind 
and degree, all day and all night long." 

"This frightful calamity which I have just represented, extended 
over all Egypt: there was not a single inhabited spot where the prac- 
tice of eating human flesh did not become extremely common. Syene, 
Kous, the Faioum, Mahalleh, Alexandria, Damietta, and all other parts 
of Egypt, were witnesses of these scenes of horror. — A merchant, a 
friend of mine, a man on whom one may rely, told me, on his return 
from Alexandria, many facts of the nature of those which I have re- 
lated, which had passed before his own eyes; and the most remarkable 
thing that he told me was that he had seen five children's heads in the 
same boiler, prepared with exquisite spices. And now, here is enough 
on this part of the subject, upon which, though I have enlarged a good 
deal, it appears to me that I have been very brief." 

He then gives an account of the murders on the river and the roads; 
and continues : 

" As for the number of the poor who perished from hunger and ex- 
haustion, God alone knows what it was. What we shall sa}^ of it must 
be regarded only as a slight sketch which may convey some idea of 
the fearful excess reached by this mortality. One thing of which I 
may speak as having seen it myself, at Misr, at Cairo, and in the neigh- 
boring places, is that wherever one went, there was not a spot in which 
one's feet or one's eyes were not encountered by a corpse, or a man in 
the agonies of death, or even a great number in this dreadful state. 
Day by day, from one hundred to five hundred dead bodies were taken 
from Cairo, to be carried to the place where they might have funeral 
rites. At Misr the number of dead was incalculable. They were not 
buried, but merely cast out of the town. At last, there were not enough 
living left to carry away the dead, and they remained in the open air, 
among the houses and shops, or even in the interior of dwellings. You 
might see a corpse falling to pieces in the very place where a cook or 
a baker, or other tradesman, was carrying on his business. 

" As for the suburbs and villages, all the inhabitants perished, except 
a small number, of whom a portion quitted their abodes to go some- 
where else. We must scarcely except from what I have now said the 
capitals of the provinces, and the largest villages. . . A traveler often 
passed through a large village without seeing a single living inhabit- 
ant. He saw the houses standing open, and the corpses of those who 
had lived there stretched out opposite one another — some decayed, and 
some recently dead. Very often, there was a house full of furniture, 
without any one to take possession of it. What I am now saying has 
been communicated to me by several persons whose narratives con- 
firmed each other. One of them said as follows : — ' We arrived at a 
village, and there found no living thing, on the earth or in the air. 
Having entered the houses, the state in which the inhabitants appeared 



FAMINE IN EGYPT. 



237 



offered us an exact picture of what God says in this passage of the 
Kuran : We have mowed them nil down, and exterminated them. We 
saw the inhabitants of each house extended dead, the husband, the wife, 
and the children. From thence we went to another village, where we 
were told that there had been till now four hundred weaving shops ; 
and it presented to us the same scene of desolation as the first. We 
saw the weaver dead in his loom-pit,* and all his dead family round 
him. I was here reminded of that other text of the Kuran : One sin- 
gle cry was heard, and they all perished. We then proceeded,' says 
the same person, 'to another village, where we found things just in the 
same state; no creature living, and the inhabitants having all become 
the prey of death. As we were obliged to remain there, in order to 
sow the lands, we had to hire people to carry away the bodies, and 
throw them into the Nile, at the rate of a piece of silver! for every ten 
bodies. At last,' added this person, ' the wolves and hyaenas succeeded 
to the inhabitants, feeding on their carcases.' 

" This is one of the most remarkable things which I myself saw," 
continues Abdallatif. " As I was one day, in company with several 
other persons, in a place which overlooked the Nile, there passed before 
our eyes, in the course of one hour, about ten corpses, swollen and 
puffed up like water-skins filled with air. We saw them by chance, 
not having directed our attention that way, and without commanding 
from our station the whole breadth of the Nile. The next day, being 
in a boat, we saw on the canal and on all the banks, scattered limbs 
like — to use a comparison of the poet Amrialkais — ' the roots of bulb- 
ous plants which have been drawn out of the ground.' I have heard 
of a fisherman of the port of Tennis who saw pass near him, in a sin- 
gle day, four hundred corpses which the waters of the river carried 
with them to the sea. 

" According to the testimony of a great number of witnesses, the 
road between Egypt and Syria was like a vast field sown with human 
bodies; or rather, like a plain which has just been swept by the scythe 
of the mower. It had become as a banquet-hall for the birds and wild 
beasts which gorged themselves on their flesh ; and the very dogs that 
these fugitives had taken with them, to share their exile, were the first 
to devour their bodies. 

" The inhabitants of the Hauf," (a district to the east of the Nile, 
below Cairo,) " when they retired into Syria to find pasturage, were 
the first who perished upon this road ; long as it is, it was strewn with 
their corpses, like locusts which have been broiled" (by the fires lighted 
to smoke them down) ; " and to this moment, some are yet perishing 
there. The emigration transported some to Mosul, to Bagdad, to the 
countries of Korasan, of the Greek empire, of Africa, and of Yemen ; 
and they were dispersed into all parts. It often happened that, among 

» See p. 80. 

I The value of these " pieces" of gold and silver has varied largely ; but Mr. 
Lane, in his notes to the " Arabian Nights," advises us to suppose them to average, — 
the piece of gold, half a guinea or ten shillings, and the piece of silver about six- 
pence. 



238 



EASTERN LIFE. 



this crowd of emigrants, a woman shpped away from her children, and 
thus abandoned the unhappy little creatures, who were tormented by 
hunger till death put an end to their sufferings." 

After a dreadful notice of the sale for bread of people of condition, 
Abdahatif tells us what he considers the most wonderful thing in the 
whole history; a thing which to us does not appear wonderful at all; 
that, notwithstanding such a complexity of woes as distinctly revealed 
the wTath of God, men continued to adore the idols of their criminal 
passions without any amendment, and still waUowed in the sea of their 
sins. He seems to be unaware that the tempting devils of human pas- 
sions are roused and exasperated and hardened by such hopeless mise- 
ry as leaves them nothing more to fear from the anger of God, which, 
in such a season, becomes to them a mere empty name. 

He next tells us of the strange appearance of a multitude of dwell- 
ings without anyone to inhabit them. "I ought not," he says, " to omit 
noticing the depopulation of towns and villages, and the desertion of 
the unpeopled houses and shops: — this last trait belongs to the picture 

which I have undertaken to draw Even at Cairo, the mansions, 

the houses, and the shops situated in the heart of the town, and in the 
best quarters, are for the most part, empty or deserted, so that, in the 
most frequented part of this capital there is a mansion composed of 
more than fift}' apartments which have all remained empty except 
four, where some people are lodged to take care of the place. The 
inhabitants of Cairo at the present time use no other fuel for their 
hearths and ovens than rafters, doors, and posts. — It is, however, a 
thing well worthy of wonder that, among people who had always before 
been unfortunate, there are some who have made a fortune this year. 
Some have amassed wealth by trade in corn ; others by coming to rich 
inheritances : some others have grown wealthy without any one know- 
ing how. Blessed be He who distributes or withholds his gifts accord- 
ing to His good pleasure, and who gives a share of His favors to all 
creatures !" 

As the vraters were so low previous to the inundation of this year as 
to leave the Nilometer completely dry, it is obvious that the flood must 
be again inadequate, unless a most unusual amount of water came down. 
And it was inadequate: yet the account of the second year leaves the 
reader consoled and hopeful; so that I will give a few passages, which 
are also necessary to the completeness of the narrative. 

Not only did the Nile cease to flow at the base of the Nilometer on 
the Geezeh side ; it left a long and broad island, where fragments of 
ancient constructions were observed. I wish Abdallatif had told us 
what these ancient constructions appeared, to be. If he had, we might 
have learned some secrets about the bed of the river, and about the 
changes of its course. The corruption of the water was very great this 
year. The inundation took place languidly, sometimes stopping; and 
once, for three days, when the people gave up all for lost, and prepar- 
ed themselves for total destruction. This was on the 9th of August. 
But it rose again, at irregular intervals, till the 4th of September, when 
it reached fifteen cubits, sixteen digits. It began to sink the same day, 



FAMINE IN EGYPT. 



239 



before the ground could imbibe much of the benefit, and declined so 
rapidly that not nearly all the districts felt the inundation, and some of 
those very scantily. Abdallatif observes, " One would have said that 
it was only the phantom of the inundation which had visited them, like 
those spectres that we imagine we see in a dream, and which imme- 
diately vanish. Only the level lands profited by the inundation : and 
the lower provinces, as Garbiyyeh and some others, were sufficiently 
watered: but the villages were entirely emptied of cultivators and la- 
borers. This text of the Kuran might be applied to them. The next 
morning nothing was seen of thein but their habitations. The rich, 
collected their scattered dependents, and brought together the few la- 
borers who remained to them. Laborers and cattle were so rare that 
a bull in good condition was sold for seventy pieces of gold ; and one 
which was in poor plight for a little less, — In the greater part of the 
country districts, the waters retired too soon, and before the lands had 
been duly soaked, because there was no one to shut in the waters, 
and detain them upon the fields; and this was the reason why such 
lands remained untilled, though they had partaken of the inundation. 
Many which had been watered enough remained fallow, because the 
proprietors could neither provide the seed nor pay the expenses of 
cultivation. Of the fields which were sown, many w^ere laid waste by 
the vermin which devoured the seed : and of the seed which escaped 
this destruction, much gave out only a weak blade which presently 
perished. 

"It is from God that consolation must be looked for : for it is He who, 
by His goodness and liberality, determines happy events." 

Till the middle of the second year, everything continued to grow 
worse. " Fewer poor perished," says Abdallatif,* " not because the 
cause of their destruction was altered, but only because they were re- 
duced to a small number — The practice of eating human flesh became 
less common ; and at last we heard no more of it. The provisions ex- 
posed for sale in the market were more rarely stolen, because vagabonds 
had almost disappeared from the town. The price of provisions fell 
till the ardeb of wheatf was sold for three pieces of gold, (it had been 
five,) " but this abatement of price was owing to the small number of 
consumers, and not to the abundance of food. The city was relieved 
by the loss of the greater part of its population ; and all that it contain- 
ed was reduced in the same proportion. People became accustomed 
to the dearness of provisions; and by dint of enduring famine, they 
had, as it were, contracted the habit, hke that of a natural state of 
things." .... 

" I have been assured that there had previously been at Misr nine 
hundred machines for weaving mats; and that now only fifteen remain- 
ed. We have only to apply the same proportion to the other trades 
which are carried on in that town ; to the shop-keepers, bakers, grocers, 
shoemakers, tailors and other artisans. The numbers employed in each 

* Relation de l Egypte, Livre II. ch. 3. 
t A little under five bushels. 



240 



EASTERN LIFE. 



of these were reduced in the same proportion as the mat weavers ; or 
in a greater. 

" Fowls failed altogether, except a few which were brought from 
Syria. I have heard that an inhabitant of Egypt, seeing himself re- 
duced to indigence, was, as it were, inspired by God to buy a hen, 
which he caused to be brought from Syria, and for which he paid sixty 
pieces of gold. He sold it again at Cairo, for eight hundred pieces of 
gold, to the people whose business is to rear fowls. When the eggs 
appeared, they were bought for a piece of silver each: — afterwards, 
two, three, and then four eggs might be had for that money ; and this 
was the price which was sustained. A chicken sold for a hundred 
pieces of silver ; and the price remained for a long time as high as a 
piece of gold, and more. — The ovens were heated with the wood taken 
from empty mansions. Those who had ovens bought a mansion for a 
very low price, and used the partitions and the rafters, which served 
them for a time to heat their ovens : when this resource was exhaust- 
ed, they bought another mansion. There were some among them who, 
regarding only the baseness of their feelings, got into the houses in the 
night, and took their provision of wood, without meeting anybody who 
could oppose their thievery. — It often happened that a mansion con- 
tinued empty, nobody remaining there but the proprietor : and for want 
of finding any one who would purchase it, he himself took the joists, 
the doors and all the furniture, which he sold : and then he abandoned 
the dismantled place. The same was done with houses which were 
hired. — As for the villages round Cairo, and in the provinces, they are 
now merely a fearful solitude. One may travel for several days toge- 
ther, and in all directions, without meeting a single living creature ; — 
nothing but corpses. — A great mortality and pestilence happened again 
in the Faioum, in the province of Garbiyyeh, and at Damietta and 
Alexandria. It was at the time of sowing that this scourge was at the 
worst ; and there were instances where many laborers perished suc- 
cessively at the same plough. It was related to me how the cultivators 
who sowed the seed were not those who had prepared the land : and 
that again, it was a different set who gathered the harvest. — I myself 
saw the sowing done for one of the principal lords : he sent people to 
do it: then, having found that they were all dead, he sent others: and 
the greater part of these died also. This happened over and over 
again, in various districts. — Persons who may be relied on informed 
me that at Alexandria, on one single Friday, the Imaum had uttered 
the funeral prayers over seven hundred bodies : and that the same in- 
heritance had passed to fourteen heirs in succession in the course of a 
month : and also that above twenty thousand inhabitants of that city had 
left it, had retired to the province of Barka, had established themselves 
there, and had rendered that region flourishing." 

On the 20th of May, " there happened a violent earthquake, which 
filled every one with terror. Every one leaped from his bed, and ut- 
tered cries of supplication to the all-powerful God. The movement 
remained a long time; the shocks were hke the motion of a sieve or 
riddle, or like that which a bird makes in flapping its wings. There 



FAMINE IN EGYPT. 



241 



were in all three violent shocks, which shook the buildings, made the 
doors rattle, and the rafters and roof tremble : and the dwellings which 
were in bad condition or in a lofty situation seemed doomed to destruc- 
tion. There were more shocks towards noon of the same day ; but they 
were felt by few persons, because they were gentle and soon over. It 
had been extremely cold that night, so as to compel us to cover our- 
selves more warmly than usual: to this temperature succeeded the next 
day an extreme heat, and an excessive pestilential wind which inter- 
cepted respiration, and was positively suffocating. Such an earthquake 
as this is rarely known in Egypt. We afterwards learned by tidings 
which arrived from many quarters, that the earthquake was felt at the 
same hour in distant countries, and in villages a long way off. I con- 
sider it certain that at the same moment a great part of the world felt 
the shock, from Kous to Damietta, Alexandria, the coast of Syria, and 
indeed the whole of Syria, in all its length and breadth. Many in- 
habited places disappeared altogether, without any trace whatever 
being left of them, and an innumerable multitude of people perished. 
I know of no place in all Syria which suffered less than Jerusalem : 
that city suffered very httle damage. The ravages caused by this 
event were much greater in the countries inhabited by the Franks than 
in those occupied by the Mussulmans." .... 

" The following fact is one of the most remarkable of all that I wit- 
nessed. Several persons among those who diligently visited me to 
confer with me on medicine, having got as far as the Treatise on Ana- 
tomy (of Galen) found it difficult to understand me, as I found it diffi- 
cult to make myself understood by them, because there is a great dif- 
ference between a verbal description and the inspection of the objects 
themselves. Having learned that there was at Maks a hill on which 
human remains had accumulated in great quantity, we went there ; 
and we saw a mound of considerable extent composed of the remains 
of human bodies: there was more of them than of the soil: and we 
could reckon that there were twenty thousand corpses, and, more that 
could be perceived by the eye. They might be distinguished into dif- 
ferent classes, according to age." And then he proceeds to give an 
anatomical lecture. 

" When from a height we looked down," he continues, " upon the 
place called the Basin, and which is a considerable hollow, we saw 
skulls, some white, some black, and others of a deep brown: they were 
in layers, and heaped up in such a quantity that they covered up the 
other bones: one would have said that there were only heads without 
bodies: and one might suppose that one saw melons which had been 
gathered, and which were thrown into a pile, as we heap sheaves upon 
a granary floor. Some days afterwards I saw them again: the sun 
had dried the flesh : the skulls had become white, and I compared 
them to ostriches' eggs piled together. When I contemplated on the 
one hand the solitude which reigned in the streets and markets of 
Misr, and on the other these plains and hills which vomited corpses, I 
represented to myself a caravan which had quitted the spot where it 
had encamped, and had removed to another place. Moreover, this was 
16 



242 



EASTERN LIFE. 



not the only scene which, offered such a spectacle : wherever one went, 
the same scene was presented; and often a much more frightful one.'^ 

" We will now briefly declare the state of the Nile for this year. 
The waters had considerably sunk in the month of January ; and they 
continued to sink till men and horses could pass the river by fording in 
several places. It was in Ramadhan that the river was at its lowest 
point: its bed was left dry, below Mikyas, to the distance of about 
eight hundred cubits. Ebn-Abi'braddad ascertained the height of the 
water at Mikyas on the liSth of June; it was a cubit and a half; 
whereas the year before it stood at two cubits on that day. Last year, 
too, the river had begun to rise on this day : but now we had to wait till 
the 19th of July. In all this interval, the river had risen only four 
digits; so that there was a very bad opinion of the inundation for this 
year; the despair was general; people imagined that something extra- 
ordinary had happened to the sources of the Nile, and in the places 
through which it passes. However, the river now began sensibly to 
rise: so that at the end of Epiphi (July) its height was three cubits. 
At this time the waters ceased to rise for two days, which caused ex- 
treme terror ; because such a pause was contrary to ordinary expe- 
rience. But soon after the waters came in great abundance; they rose 
by strides, and one might have said that mountains of water leaped 
upon one another. In the space of ten days, the river rose eight cubits, 
three of which were continuous, without any pause at all. On the 
1st of September the greatest height was reached, which was one digit 
under sixteen cubits. After remaining for two days at this height, 
the waters began to decline slowly, and to flow away very gradually. 

" Here is what I had to say of the circumstances of the horrible 
scourge whose history I have narrated. I shall, therefore, finish here 
this section and the whole book. Praise be to God, the Sovereign 
Master of the universe ! May God be favorable to the Prince of his 
messengers, to Mohammed the Prophet without learning, and to his 
holy and honorable descendants !" 

Such was the dearth of the years a. d. 1199-1202. Such was the 
temporary victory gained by the pertinacious old Desert over the strug- 
gling Nile. The history suggests many thoughts ; — much admiration 
of the sagacity and administrative ability of Joseph in saving the Egyp- 
tian nation of his day from a fate as much worse even than the above 
related, as their numbers were greater in the ages of the national glory 
than ever afterwards. Much do we wonder, too, whether Joseph was 
guided by any precedent ; and how far by the prophecies of science. 
We should Hke to know whether, as he grew up in his new country, 
he heard traditionary accounts of the horrors of drought in the valley; 
and whether, in such a case, he applied himself to learn the premoni- 
tory signs of the calamity. Much do we wonder whether the ancient 
race was ever thus nearly swept away ; whether the priestly watch- 
men ever looked abroad from the top of their propyla over plains sown 
with human bones instead of sprouting seed, and whether they called 
together the few survivors to sacrifice to Osiris, to bring him back from 
his absence or displeasure to his favorite valley. Much should we like 



CAIRO. 



243 



to know from what depth of ages the greatest of intermittent springs 
had regularly gushed forth, to give life to an expecting nation, waiting 
in hope along a line of two thousand miles. The priests who expressed 
to Herodotus such anxious fears for the Greeks, because of their de- 
pendence upon the clouds, could hardly have known of any such drought 
as could parallel that of a.b. 1200, or they would have moderated their 
boasting, even if they had concealed the fact. Among the few histori- 
cal notices which remain appended by Manetho to the names of the 
kings, such as " During this reign" (first king of the Second Dynasty), 
" a great landshp took place at Bubastis, and many perished," I am not 
aware that any relate to a failure of the Nile ; or that there is any- 
where a hint of even a tradition of such a famine as Abdallatif witness- 
ed. It is probable that, in the days of high Egyptian civilization, when 
Egypt was the granary of the world, better precautions were taken than 
by succeeding races of inhabitants. It seems more probable that men 
so able as that old Egyptian aristocracy, should have kept ample stores 
of food in reserve, than that the Nile should never have failed through 
several thousand years ; or than that the memory of a great famine 
should have been lost in the time of Herodotus. 

Here, then, we leave the Nile, which has been the thread of our 
discourse thus far. It has been before me, with all its antique interest, 
and all its fresh young beauty, during whatever I have written to this 
point ; and I must hope that my readers have caught some sensations 
of that interest, and some glimpses of that beauty, as they have fol- 
lowed me. We shall see no more of it now, except as a mere line 
noticed from the citadel of Cairo, and as a mournful parting vision on 
the evening of our first encampment in the Desert. — And now, to 
Cairo ! 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CAIRO.— STREETS AND BAZAARS.— MOSQUES.— CITADEL.— FETE OF 
THE BIRTH OF THE PROPHET.— ENTRANCE OF THE MAHHMIL.— 
THE MAGICIAN.— SOCIETY IN CAIRO.— MR. LANE. 

There are few gayer things in life, for one who chooses to be gay, 
than a visit to Cairo. The stranger must use a few precautions against 
the disturbance of . his gayety; and then he may surrender himself 
to the most wonderful and romantic dream that can ever meet his 
I waking senses. The most wonderful and romantic, — because there is 
I nothing so wonderful and romantic in the whole social world as an Ara- 
I bian city ; and Cairo is the queen of Arabian cities. Damascus is 
I usually ranked with Cairo; but, full of charms as Damascus is, (as we 
I may see by and by,) it is charming for other reasons than its virtues as 
I an Arabian city; on which ground it cannot for a moment stand a com- 
I parison with Cairo. The precautions against seriousness which a stran- 
ger must take are, first, to forget that he is in Egypt ; to avoid looking 



244 



EASTERN LIFE. 



over westwards to the P3-rainids, or too far southwards, lest an array of 
old Egyptian ghosts should marshal themselves on the horizon, and cast 
a shadow of solemnity over his thoughts. He must also shake off any 
considerate humanity which may hang about him, and avoid inquiring 
what lies beneath what he sees, or thinking of any people but those 
whom he meets in the bazaars. A butterfly may enjoy a glorious day 
in hovering about an array of flower-baskets, not caring whether the 
flowers are growing or stuck into wet sand; and the stranger in Cairo 
may have a short season of transport, if he will only take up with the 
shows of things, and forget the roots. 

The mere spectacle of the streets I relished more and more to the 
last. As for the rest, I could not keep my heart and mind in abeyance 
for many days ; and before I left, I felt that there is hardly a spot in 
what I have seen of the countries of the world where I would not rather 
live than in Cairo. The more I liked the Arabs, and the more I ad- 
mired their gem of a city, the more impossible I felt it would be to live 
there, for any other reason than a strong call of duty. The mere spec- 
tacle of the streets became, however, as I said, more bewitching every 
day. 

After an early cup of coffee, we usually mounted our donkeys for a 
ride of two hours before the table-d'hote breakfast. I like donkey- 
riding in Cairo. I never tried it out of Egypt, except for a few miles 
in Palestine; but I do not suppose it is the same thing anywhere else. 

The creatures are full of activity, and their amble is a pleasant pace 
in the streets. Side-saddles, more or less tattered, may be hired with 
Cairo donkeys now. Mrs. Y. took her saddle from England, and I was 
fortunate enough to buy one, in good repair, on my arrival at Cairo, 
which would serve for either horse or donkey. The little rogues of 
donkey-boys were always ready and eager, close by the hotel — hustling 
each other to o:et the preference — one displaying his English with 
"God save the queen ros bif;" another smiling amiably in one's face; 
and others kicking and cuffing, as people who had a prior right, and 
must relieve us of encroachers. Then off we went briskly ihroucrh the 
Ezbekeeyeh, under the acacias, past the water-carriers, with their full 
skins on their left shoulder, and the left hand holding the orifice of the 
neck, from which they could squirt water into the road, or quietly fill 
a jar at pleasure; past the silent smoking party, with their long chi- 
bouques or serpentine nargeelehs; past the barber, shaving the head of 
a man kneeling and resting his crown on the barber's lap; past the 
veiled woman with her tray of bread — thin, round cakes; past the red 
and white striped mosque, where we looked up to the gallery of the 
minaret, in hope of the muezzin coming out to call the men to prayer; 
past a handsome house or two, with its rich lattices, its elaborate gate- 
way, and its shade of trees in front, or of shrubs within the court, of 
which we might obtain a tempting glimpse; past Shepherd's hotel, 
where English gentlemen might be seen going in and out, or chatting 
before the door; past a row of artisan dwellings, where the joiner, the 
weaver, and the maker of slippers were at work, with their oriental 
tools, and in their graceful Oriental postures — and then into the bazaars. 



STREETS AND BAZAARS. 245 

But before I had reached the bazaars, I was generally in a state of 
vexation with myself for my carelessness about surrounding objects. I 
hardly know what it is in these Eastern countries which disposes one to 
reverie; but I verily thought, the whole journey through, and especially 
at Cairo, that I was losing my observing faculties — so often had I to 
rouse myself, or to be roused by others, to heed what was before my eyes. 
I did not find it so on our route to Egypt, nor in crossing France on 
our return; so, my own experience would lead me to suppose that there 
is something in the aspect of Oriental life and scenery which meets 
and stimulates some of one's earliest and deepest associations, and en- 
gages some of one's higher mental faculties too much to leave the lower 
free. The conflict was not agreeable, however; the longing to have 
for one's own forever every exquisite feature of the scene, and presently 
the discovery that one had passed through half a dozen alleys without 
seeing anything at all; and all for pondering something which might be 
as well thought over at home! By dint of incessant self-flapping and 
endless rides, however, I arrived at last at knowing and remembering 
almost every peculiar object in Cairo — of such, I mean, as offer them- 
selves to the eye in the streets. I really do not know how I can convey 
my own impression of what I saw so well as in the words of my memo- 
randa put down at the time. "Cairo streets are wholly indescribable — 
their narrowness, antiquity, sharp lights, and arcades of gloom, carved 
lattices, mat awnings, mixture of hubbub and fatalist quietude in the 
people, to whom loss of sight appears a matter of course — the modes of 
buying and selling — all are in my mind, but cannot be set down." 
Again. "Went with my party to shop — a most amusing affair. I 
bought a Tuscan straw hat for 4s. 6cL, while a common and not large 
saucepan, copper tinned, was priced 125. It was awkward waiting 
while Mr. E. bought brown shoes, — the way was so narrow, and our 
donkeys were five, and horses and laden camels were continually pass- 
ing, thrusting us among the very merchandize ; and then there was the 
smart and repeated crack of the courbash which gives warning that a 
carriage is coming, and that we must plunge into the nearest alley; and 
then there was a cart or two; and all the while there was some staring, 
though not much, and clouds of flies from a fruiterer's shop." The 
tranquil slowness with which the tradespeople (who all looked, to my 
eyes, like kings and princes in fairy tales) served any one of us gave 
all the rest many such opportunities of observation. One of the drollest 
incidents of this kind befell when the gentlemen were in search of some 
eastern garments for their desert ride. We ladies, with the aid of our 
dragoman, made our purchases and returned to the tailor's — stood, sat, 
inquired into the meaning of everything within sight, and wondered at 
the long delay. It ended in the amusement of finding that the gentle- 
men had obtained nothing but a lesson, and some practice in trying on 
eastern garments. After a world of eflbrt, and of tying and hooking, 
and inquiring of prices, it came out that the clothes were second- 
hand; and they were pulled off' much more quickly than they were 
put on. 

Carriages are quite alarming in Cairo, which was not bulk for the 



246 



EASTERN LIFE. 



passage of anything so large. They are very peremptory, having no 
idea of stopping for anybody. Notice of their approach is given by the 
crack of the courbash of the outrider who precedes them, and any one 
who does not get out of the way on that signal must take the conse- 
quences. On comes the vehicle, jolting and rocking, and filling the 
narrow way; and young and old, blind and seeing, must squeeze them- 
selves up against the bazaar front; and a loaded camel must meet the 
shock as it may. It is worse, however, to ride in one than to meet it. 
In our drive to the hareem which we visited, we were kept in a con- 
tinual agony, so many were the people we drove against. The keep- 
ing of carriages was much on the increase before there was any pro- 
vision for them. A friend of mine found one in his street when he 
went to live there, four years and a half before my visit; and now there 
are twenty-four or twenty-five, making the passage of the street very 
hazardous. Since I left Cairo, a wide street has been begun, extending 
from the Ezbekeeyeh to the Citadel — a great convenience to the Pasha 
and the Franks, but a ruinous innovation upon the oriental appearance 
of the city. The Frank residents, however, now give up the oriental- 
ism of Cairo; and I was perpetually told by them that I v^^as looking at 
a half-European city — but my own impression is that it is as like as 
possible to the pictures in the Arabian Nights — so that, of all the cities 
that I have seen, Cairo is the one which may be the most easily ima- 
gined at a distance, in a superficial way, provided the notions of a 
mosque, a bazaar and an eastern house are once obtained from pictures. 
The one unimaginable circumstance is the atmosphere. No conception 
of the light, shade, and color can be conveyed; and they are an hourly 
surprise to the stranger in Cairo, to the last. 

The mosques are extremely interesting; partly from their architec- 
tural beauty; more so from their purposes, and the pleasure of seeing 
those purposes fulfilled. Nothing charmed me so much about them 
as the spectacle of the houseless poor, who find a refuge there. In 
the noble mosque of Sultaun Hasan, when we had mounted a long flight 
of steps from the street, and more stairs which led to the barrier where 
we must put on slippers, we entered a vast court, sacred to all who 
have hearts, whether they be heathens, Mohammedans or Christians, 
for the solace and peace which are to be found there. The greater 
part of this court was open to the sky ; its floor was of inlaid marble ; 
and in the centre was the tank where the worshipers perform their 
ablutions before praying. The steps to the roofed platform at the upper 
end were malted ; and on these steps some men were at prayer. On 
the platform sat a man making a garment, — spreading out his cloth upon 
the mat, and running the seams, as much at his ease as if he had been 
in a home of his own. This was a homeless man ; and here he was wel- 
come. Several poor people were sitting talking cheerfully ; and under 
this roof, and on this mat, they were welcome to sleep, if they had no 
other place of rest. Some children were at play quietly on the marble 
pavement. We are accustomed to say that there is no respect of per- 
sons, and that all men are equal, within the walls of our churches; but 
I never felt this so strongly in any Christian place of worship as in this 



MOSQUES. 



247 



Mohammedan one, with its air of freedom, peace, and welcome to all 
the faithful. I felt myself an intruder there, in a retreat which should 
be kept sacred for those who go to it, not as a church, but as a religious 
home. — Still, good as it seems for the people to be there, and happy as 
appears the provision for them, they are sighing, as people everywhere 
are always sighing, for the return of their golden age. This reverting pro- 
pensity seems common to all men ; and every race seems to have had its 
golden age. Our dragoman pointed to a medaUion in the interior, three 
feet in diameter, and told us that in Suhaun Hasan's time, "bread of the 
size of that was to be had for a para." — We reached this interior from 
the platform, through a magnificent portal of cast metal of beautiful 
pattern. In the centre of the vast chamber was the Sultaun's tomb, 
railed round. On the tomb lay a tattered, but very fine old copy of the 
Kuran ; and some Syrian lamps were beside it. The decorations of the 
walls and corners must once have been magnificent, some elaborate 
wood carving remaining which shows traces of gilding and color. The 
best account of a mosque that I know is that of Mr. Milnes in his 
"Palm Leaves ;" a book, the value and beauty of which can be appre- 
ciated only during or after a visit to the East. As his poem of "the 
Mosque" may not have met the eye, or fixed the attention, of all my 
readers, I venture to give part of it here. Any one who is acquainted 
with it will not be sorry to fall in with it again : — 

"A simple unpartitioned room, — 
Surmounted by an ample dome, 
Or, in some lands that favored lie, 
With centre open to the sky,' 
But roofed with arched cloisters round, 
That mark the consecrated bound, 
^ And shade the niche to Mekkeh turned, 
By which two massive lights are burned 5 
With pulpit whence the sacred word 
Expounded on great days is heard; 
With fountains fresh, where, ere they pray, 
Men wash the soil of earth away; 
With shining minaret, thin and high, 
From whose fine trellised balcony, 
AnnounceKient of the hours of prayer 
Is uttered to the silent air; 
Such is the Mosque — the holy place, 
Where faithful men of every race, 
Meet at their ease and face to face. 

Not that the power of God is here 
More manifest^ or more to fear; 
Not that the glory of his face 
Is circumscribed by any space; 
But that, as men are wont to meet 
In court or chamber, mart or street, 
For purposes of gain or pleasure. 
For friendliness or social leisure, — 
So for the greatest of all ends 
To which intelligence extends, 
The worship of the Lord, whose will 
Created and sustains us still, 



248 



EASTERN LIFE, 



And honor of the Prophet's name^ 
By whom the saving message camCy 
Believers meet together here. 
And hold these precincts very dear, 

"The floor is spread with matting neat„ 
Unstained by touch of shodden feet, — 
A decent and delightful sea,t! 
Where after due devotions paidj 
And legal ordinance obeyed^ 
Men may in happy parlance join^ 
And gay with serious thought combiner. 
May ask the news from lands away^ 
May fix the business of to-day j 
Or, with "God willing," at the close, 
To-morrow's hopes and deeds dispose. 

''Children are running in and out, 
With silver-sounding laugh and shout,. 
No more disturbed in their sweet play. 
No more disturbing those that pray, 
Than the poor birds that fluttering fly 
Among the rafters there on high, 
Or seek at times, with grateful hop, 
The corn fresh-sprinkled on the top. 

"So, lest the stranger's scornful eye 
Should hurt this sacred family, — 
Lest inconsiderate words should wound 
Devout adorers with their sound, — 
Lest careless feet should stain the floor 
With dirt and dust from out the door, — 
'Tis well that custom should protect 
The place with prudence circumspect. 
And let no unbeliever pass 
The threshold of the faithful mass^ 
That as each Muslim his Hareem 
Guards even from a jealous dream, 
So should no alien feeling scathe 
This common home of public faith, 
So should its very name dispel 
The presence of the infidel." 

The Pasha's new mosque at the citadel is a building magnificent for 
space, and in its position : and I hope he will see it finished before the 
time comes for him to be laid in it. It is a great enterprise; and this 
mosque Mali henceforth be a striking feature to the stranger in the 
aspect of Cairo. But I must think the use of alabaster for the interior 
of the court a great mistake. However beautiful this veined alabaster 
is in small portions, its effect is not good in the mass. I never looked 
round that court without being reminded of dirty soap-suds. The 
streaky and mottled character of the alabaster utterly destroys the im- 
pression of grandeur which the architecture would otherwise give. 
And, what is worse, it is a crumbling material. Little kernels are fall- 
ing out, and corners are broken oW, and the sharpness of edges is gone 
already, before the work is half done. One might almost as well build 



THE CITADEL. 



249 



a sculptured and pillared hall of chalk. The interior of this mosque is 
of vast dimensions, and must be truly imposing when finished. 

It is from this eminence, — from the terrace of the citadel — that that 
view is obtained which is by some declared to be unsurpassed by any 
in the known world. On the whole, I prefer the view of Damascus 
from the Salaheeyeh to that of Cairo from the terrace of the citadel: 
but elsewhere I certainly should not know how to find a parallel 
for it. 

I would entreat any stranger to see this view first in the evening, — 
before sunset. I saw it three times or more. In the morning there 
was much haze in the distance, and a sameness of color which hurt the 
eye. At noon there was no color at all : all color being discharged in 
the middle of the day in Egypt, except in shady places. In the even- 
ing the beauty is beyond description. The vastness of the city, as it 
lies stretched below, surprises every one. It looks a perfect wilder- 
ness of flat roofs, cupolas, minarets, and palm tops, with an open space 
here and there, presenting the complete front of a mosque, and gay 
groups of people, and moving camels, — a relief to the eye, though so 
diminished by distance. The aqueduct is a most striking feature, run- 
ning off" for miles. The City of Tombs was beautiful and wonderful, 
— its fawn-colored domes rising against the somewhat darker sand of 
the desert. The river gleamed and wound away from the dim south 
into the blue distance of the north, the green strip of cultivation on its 
banks delighting the eye amidst the yellow sands. Over to the west, 
the Pyramids looked their full height, and their full distance, which is 
not the case from below. The platform of the Great Pyramid is here 
seen to be a considerable hill of itself ; and the fields and causeways 
which intervene between it and the river lie as in a map, and indicate 
the true distance and elevation of these mighty monuments. The 
Lybian hills, dreary as possible, close in the view behind them, as the 
Mokuttam range does above and behind the citadel. — This view is the 
great sight of Cairo, and that which the stranger contrives to bring into 
his plan for almost every day. 

Of course we saw the court where the Memlooks were slaughtered, 
and the wall whence Emin Bey took his leap, and the narrow street 
below, up which he fled. The wall must have been a good deal raised, 
even allowing for the rubbish heap which that day lay below ; for its 
height above the street is now not "less than eighty feet. No lapse of 
time or consideration of circumstances can soften one's feelings about 
that act of treacherous barbarity, or lessen one's compassion for the 
man who would purchase life and empire (supposing them to have been 
really in danger) at such a price. If any of my readers should be 
unaware of this deed of Mohammed Alee's, it may be soon learned. — 
He wanted to go into Arabia, to drive out the Wahabees who molested 
the pilgrims: but he was afraid to leave Egypt while the proud Mem- 
looks remained, to accomplish some objects of theirs, adverse to him, 
in his absence. He invited the whole body of their leaders to the 
citadel, to witness a fete, treated them with the usual hospitalities, and 
dismissed them courteously. As the last went out, the doors were 



S50 



EASTERN LIFE. 



securely fastened; and when the guests, who had mounted their horses 
in the court, reached the gates, they found them closed, and nobody to 
answer their call to have them opened. As they turned, to gallop back 
to the Pasha, a murderous fire was directed upon them from above. 
They could find no one; and they were surrounded by high walls. 
Men and horses lay heaped together in the agonies of death. Some 
fled round and round the court till the inevitable ball reached them: 
and more than one, in rage and agony at such a death being appointed 
to armed men in their martial strength, drove their heads against the 
stone walls, or shot out their own brains. One only escaped; — Emin 
Bey, who made his horse leap the parapet, alighted on a heap of rub- 
bish in the street below, pushed his frantic horse to a gallop through 
the narrow streets, and took refuge with some Arabs, whose tents were 
about two miles from the city, and who concealed him till he could 
reach the sea, and quit the country. The Pasha employed his barbar- 
ous Greek soldiers to do this deed, and paid them by a license to 
plunder the houses of the Meralooks. The slaughter and ravage which 
ensued were so horrible that the Pasha himself had to parade the city 
on the second day, to put a stop to the pillage. The massacre took 
place on the 1st of March, 1811; and the number of Memlooks slain 
in the citadel is reported to be from 360 to 440. How many more of 
inferior rank were slain in the city, no one seems to know, the reports 
varying from 80 to 1200. Of course, the Memlook power was de- 
stroyed. The Pasha obtained his object with regard to that. But the 
memory of this deed interferes fatally with his other great object of 
being considered to have emancipated himself from the barbarism of 
the eastern world. 

We saw his palace, in which there is nothing remarkable. His bath 
was yet warm : and his fine, uncomfortable, embroidered towel still 
wet. His gardener offered flowers to Mrs. Y. and me, in bouquets of 
a pyramidal form, — as carefully built up, in their way, as the pyra- 
mids themselves. 

The fete of the Birth of the Prophet happened when we were at 
Cairo ; and we went at noon to see what it was like. The best part 
of it was the appearance of the city that day, when the people were 
all dressed in their best; the men with clean turbans and bright purple 
tunics, and the ladies with gay silks under their floating balloon mantles 
of black silk. On the spot of the fete, the scene was not unlike that 
of a fair at home, except of course in regard to the dresses, and that 
the riders in the swings sat in the oriental fashion. There was a booth 
with dancing girls : a horrid sight, which we were glad to turn away 
from. So hideous a creature as the one who was dancing, I never saw; 
the music was only the ordinary drum, or tom-tom, as it would be 
called further south in Africa: and the dancing is an observance which 
we could never understand, — there being neither grace, nor mirth, nor 
any other merit in it that we could perceive. Whenever we saw it^ 
in this booth, in the hareems, or on our deck, it appeared to us the 
same disagreeable and foolish wriggle, without activity of limb, or grace 
of attitude. The rest of the spectacle at this fete was merely swing- 



MODES OF LIFE OF THE EGYPTIANS. 



251 



ing, and feeding at the stalls. The Arabs are fond of sucking the 
sugar-cane, which indeed I think very pleasant myself. We never 
rode through Cairo without meeting people thus enjoying themselves ; 
and during our voyage, the avidity of the crew, when they could con- 
trive to land in a cane patch, was remarkable. Watchmen would 
come rushing down, to defend the canes : and we were made seriously 
uneasy sometimes by seeing what bundles our men carried away under 
their arms. If we remonstrated, we were told that they had paid for 
them. Perhaps they might; but I could never, by the sharpest watch- 
ing, see the payment made : and I did see, now and then, that the 
country people were very angry. 

Of course, the chief interest in these fetes which we saw, and where- 
ever many people were gathered together, was in observing their faces. 
The Arab face is very beautiful; and the expression has so much to do 
with it that the worst set of features is not ugly, as it would be else- 
where. One face, of which I saw a good deal, would appear hideous 
if drawn in protile, or presented in a cast, — with its outrageously thick 
lips, immense jaw and ugly nose : but I think of that face as almost 
beautiful. The brown complexion (which, in this case, precisely 
matched the owner's cinnamon-colored vest.) is a kind of veil to Eng- 
lish eyes, softening down harshness of features: and then, there are 
the brilliant teeth, quite universally magnificent, and only injured by 
the strange practice I have mentioned — of drawing the teeth needful 
for biting cartridges : — and then, there are the beautiful eyes, soft, clear 
and intelligent ; and the exquisite grace of carriage and gesture, set off 
to the utmost by the oriental dress. Among these advantages, the ugli- 
ness of particular features is almost lost: and the prevailing impres- 
sion of the observer is that he sees beauty wherever he turns. The 
pathetic expression of the Arab face, its softness and melancholy ; the 
flowing dress, the slow movement, (in the absence of causes of dis- 
turbance,) give the impression of great dignity, it is true, but also of 
languor and delicacy : but the muscular strength of these pathetic Arabs 
is very great. It is not only that they can support fatigue and hunger 
in their journeys, and wrestle vigorously with an opponent, in one of the 
quarrels they are so fond of falling into: they lift prodigious weights, 
and carry vast burdens in cool blood. We understood our dragoman's 
health not to be very good ; and I certainly doubted his fitness for his 
office at first, when it was clear that his lungs were weak ; but the 
daily proofs he gave of muscular strength would have surprised many 
a stout English servant. 

As for accurate knowledge of the health and length of life of the 
Egyptians, there is none to be had. The distrust existing between the 
government and the people is a bar to the obtaining of any reliable 
information about any of their affairs; and the observations of a passing 
stranger can be worth little. My impression was that of travelers 
generally. I was surprised to see how dirty and unhealthy-looking 
children can grow into strong and well-formed men and women: and 
I was struck by the small proportion of sick that came under my no- 
tice throughout the country. On the whole, a stranger would be dis- 



252 



EASTERN LIFE. 



posed to conclude that the poorer classes, whom the curse of polygamy 
scarcely reaches, must be in favorable circumstances in regard to health, 
— judging from the prevalence of muscular strength, of fine teeth, and 
of beauty of form and face. Among the richer classes, where a viler 
polygamy prevails than in almost any country of the world, it is far 
otherwise. 

We were so fortunate as to witness a much more imposing festival 
than that of the birth of the Prophet: — the return of the Mahhmil. 

On the morning of Sunday, the 14th of January, the news flew 
through the city of the return of the Pilgrims from Mekkeh. This 
pilgrimage is always subject to so many hardships and dangers, so 
many lives and fortunes are concerned in it, and there is such an ab- 
sence of news from the departure of the caravan till its return, that its 
re-appearance is always an occasion of great excitement : and this year 
the excitement was unusually strong, from the cholera having committed 
great ravages among the pilgrims. As soon as this fact was made known 
in the city by the first comers, early that Sunday morning, crowds 
poured out to meet the caravan ; — crowds of people, each one of whom 
was in suspense about the life of some relation or friend. We were 
told by friends who happened to witness this meeting, that it was a 
very touching sight; and that the joy of some, and the dreadful wailing 
of others, were indeed quite overpowering. The report in the city 
throughout the day was that eight thousand out of thirty thousand had 
perished; but this was a great exaggeration, as we soon found. The 
caravan consisted of seventy thousand in the whole — Cairo, that is, 
Egypt, sending out about thirty thousand of these. One-tenth of the 
whole, seven thousand, were carried off by cholera. 

We rode, in the afternoon, to the encampment outside the walls. 
There was not much to see, the pilgrims having naturally entered the 
city and gone home, instead of wailing to join the procession of the 
next morning. Out of the two thousand camels of the morning, we 
saw only about one hundred and fifty. The tents were to the last de- 
gree shabby and sordid-looking; and so were the machines — the cano- 
pied-boxes — -in which some of the women and children were carried on 
the backs of camels: but one likes to see the shabbiness which tells of 
the reality of such a pilgrimage. A governor of the expedition is ap- 
pointed yearly: and here the governor with his attendants was sitting 
in his tawdry and faded green tent, smoking, and permitting the gaze of 
all who came. W^e saw how the beasts of the caravan are tethered at 
night, and observed a few groups of the pilgrims, eating or lounging, or 
lending their children ; and that was all. 

Accounts differed as to the time when the procession was to enter, 
the next morning. Alee had hired for us a shop-front in the Turkish 
bazaar; and there we were seated, by seven o'clock, I think, on a car- 
pet, at the level of the people's shoulders ;— in as good a place as could 
be had. While there, no insult whatever was offered us; and our pre- 
sence seemed to excite very little notice, except among those who 
wanted baksheesh. Afterwards, when we were riding after the Mahh- 
mil to the citadel, and w'hen the press of the crowd made the act a safe 



THE MAHHMIL. 



253 



one, somebody spat a mouthful of chewed sugar-cane at me ; and I 
received a smart slap in the face from a millet-stalk: and one or two 
other persons in the Frank group met with a similar insult. But the 
good behavior on the whole was wonderful, in comparison with former 
times. Bake Bey, the ruler of the affairs of the festival, had declared 
that any rudeness to Europeans should be severely punished. 

We had not to wait long for the procession ; and the interval was 
amusing enough. A pair of wrestlers came to show their prowess be- 
fore us. Never had I imagined such wrestling. Their bodies, bare to 
the waist, were slippery with grease ; and they took the greatest ima- 
ginable care not to hold one another too hard. They seemed to sup- 
pose each other made of pie-crust. They looked at each other with a 
sort of good-humored threatening; shook their heads manfully; slipped 
their hands round one another's greasy arms ; leaned their heads gently 
against one another's shoulders ; strove to pant and be out of breath ; 
and then turned to us for baksheesh. We had seen many a better 
match on the river-bank, when two of our crew had quarreled about 
a bit of bread. 

There were no pilgrims in the procession. They were gone home, 
or were entering the city more quickly and quietly by other gates. 
First, came music, loud and rude: and next a company of foot-soldiers. 
Then, the governor of the caravan, — the Emir el Hadj, with his of- 
ficers. Then the Mahhmil: — which is the sort of vehicle or tent in 
which a royal lady would ride on her camel, if she went on the pil- 
grimage. The origin of the custom of sending the Mahhmil is, as Mr. 
Lane tells us,* supposed to be that a royal lady did make the pilgrim- 
age, in the thirteenth century, in such a vehicle ; that her empty tent 
was dispatched with the caravan for several years afterwards, as an 
emblem of royalty ; and that princes of other countries sent a similar 
emblem. Why it is now esteemed so sacred as it is, no one seems 
able to explain. The Mahhmil was, on this occasion, of square form, 
with a pyramidal top, surmounted by a gilt ball and crescent. Its cover- 
ing was of dark purple brocade, richly embroidered, in gold, with vari- 
ous symbolical devices. It was carried by a tall, handsome, light- 
colored camel, hung over with fringes and tassels, like the Mahhmil 
itself, and led by a proud driver, who was soon to yield up the rein to 
no less a personage than Abbas Pash-a. This was the final task of the 
camel, which was never to work more. — Next came the only offensive 
object in the whole show, — the Sheikh of the camel. This was the 
old fanatic or knave who has attended the caravan for a quarter of a 
century, rolling his head all the way to Mekkeh and back, every year. 
I do not know whether he can now hold up his head : but if his brain 
is really disordered, I am sure it is no wonder. He was naked, ex- 
cept a little pair of old cotton trowsers; his hair grew bushy and wild; 
and, as he rolled about on his camel, he looked, of course, perfecdy 
crazy. We were assured, however, that he is a rich and luxurious 
man, having one of the handsomest hareems in Cairo, and another, no 



* Modern Egyptians, II. 182. 



254 



EASTERN LIFE. 



less enviable, at Mekkeh. This fellow is allowed by government two 
camels, and whatever he wants for the journey. He is keeper of the 
cats ; about which cats we could learn nothing, except that an old wo- 
man used to carry a camel load of cats in pilgrimage; and we suppose 
the Sheikh of the camel has taken them in charge. 

The next part of the procession interested me the most. The guard 
rode two and two. These soldiers were in shabby, sometimes tattered 
clothing; which was their badge of honor. Their clothing testified to 
their activity and their hardships, during the three months ihat they had 
acted as escort to the expedition : and they were now going- to the cita- 
del, to receive new dresses. Several camels, adorned with litde flags, 
small tufts of feathers, and housings embroidered with cowries, were 
among and behind these soldiers : and that was all. 

Our asses were held in readiness for us to mount, and follow the 
procession to the citadel, which we did without difiiculty, though the 
streets were crowded. We fell in with almost all the Frank travelers 
in Cairo, making a pretty large and very conspicuous group, and a 
curious rear guard of the procession of the Mahhmil. It was here, 
when for an instant riding in single tile, that I met with the insult I 
mentioned : and I really did not wonder at it ; and could not resent it, 
putting myself in the place, for the moment, of a devout Moham- 
medan. 

The finest part of the sight was now to come. In the midst of the 
vast area before the citadel, soldiers were drawn out in three sides of a 
square ; music brayed ; cannon were fired ; and cavalry dashed about 
in the way which I had often read of, but had not, up to this moment, 
seen. Such horsemanship is really a great sight, as I afterwards occa- 
sionally felt in the Desert. It is no more like the best riding we see in 
England than the swiftest run of a greyhound is like the trot of a cat, 
or the flight of a swallow is like that of a chicken. We have not room 
for Arabian riding in England, if we had all the other requisites. It is 
not every horseman who can get access to Salisbury plain, or a race- 
course, or a long stretch of hard and smooth sea-shore. — Amidst the 
noise of the cannon, the music, and the multitude. Abbas Pasha, the 
grandson of Mohammed Alee, took the rein of the camel of the Mahh- 
mil, and led it hither and thither and away. It was a spirited and 
beautiful sight. 

I have been so often asked since my return whether I saw the Ma- 
gician at Cairo, that I suppose I had better say what I know about 
him, and what I saw him do. — Some genderaen in our hotel (Hotel 
d'Orient) told us that they had engaged the Magician for the evening 
of this iMonday, the 22d. It was permitted to our party, and to some 
other English in the hotel, to be present. The Magician did not come : 
and on being questioned the next morning, he excused himself on va- 
rious grounds; but it plainly appeared at last that he was afraid to 
come ; — afraid of being browbeaten and laughed at by the Franks, and 
of having his fee taken from him (he said) by the people in the inn- 
yard. He was promised civil treatment and earnest attention while 
with us, and special protection home after the seance. Moreover, an 



THE MAGICIAN. 



255 



admirable interpreter was offered to us. Little reliance is to be placed 
on the interpretation of any dragoman in this case : and Mr. Lane's 
nephew, Stanley Poole, kindly offered to come and be tongue to both 
parties. Those who have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Lane's ne- 
phews know that wherever they are, there is security for good sense, 
cheerful kindness, and gentlemanly manners : and on this occasion, ray 
young friend Stanley appeared to satisfy the Magician as much as he 
pleased everybody else. 

All the experiments were failures; — total and ludicrous failures: yet 
I am glad we saw the Magician ; because I have brought away a very 
clear and strong impression of the whole case: an impression which 
is shared by some who are qualified like myself to form a judgment 
upon it. 

The Magician, who is rather a good-looking old gentleman, followed 
his usual and well-known method of preparing and burning charms and 
incense, and then summoned the Arab boy who had been brought by 
himself, or some one not of the English party. When the boy crouched 
down, close to the Magician and his pan of charcoal, the incense burn- 
ing was so powerful that three of the English party were presently 
sound asleep ; and some others were drowsy. I, having no sense of 
smell, and being therefore unaffected by the perfumes, was wide awake, 
and closely on the watch. As soon as the old man had poured the 
ink into the boy's hand, and had his own left hand at liberty, he rested 
the tips of the fingers firmly on the crown of the boy's head, and kept 
them there. When asked why he did so, he replied that it was to 
hold the boy's head steady, that he might look fixedly into the ink; 
but it was observable that he did not touch the head of the others after- 
wards brought in — nor mine, when I took their place. I saw in the 
boy that peculiar quivering of the eyelids which is one sign of the pre- 
sence of mesmeric action. 

One specimen of the failures will suffice. I was sitting opposite the 
boy when he was told to call and look for Harriet Martineau. By 
degrees he spoke the name ; — saw nothing at first; but presently said 
the person was visible. " What do you see ?" — " I see a young lady, 
dressed in black silk, walking in a garden, leading a little child by the 
hand." — After a few more failures like this, he was sent away, and 
kept carefully apart till one of the gentlemen had brought in a boy 
picked up in the street. He, and another after him, succeeded no 
better. — By this time I had arrived at the conclusion which I now 
hold ; — that it is an affair of mesmerism, and that the Magician himself 
probably does not know it. If the truth were understood, I have no 
doubt it would appear that, in the first instance, a capital clairvoyant 
did see and tell the things declared, under the influence of the old man's 
mesmeric power, and when there was accidentally a mjo;;or^ established 
between the questioner and the boy. I am disposed to think that there 
was originally no imposture about the matter at all : that the Magician 
did not then understand the causes of his success, and does not now 
understand the causes of his failures. If he continues to take fees 
without hope of success, of course he is now an impostor: but if he 



256 



EASTERN LIFE. 



believes that his success or failure depends on the pleasure of spirits 
whom he propitiates, he may be always hoping for success, and may 
think it wrong to refuse the chance. It is true, he is meantime taking 
money for what he does not perform, and is therefore fairly open to 
any extent of suspicion : but I do not see reason to suppose that it is 
a case of imposture from end to end. I wish a trial could be made by 
some one who understands what is known of Mesmerism. If a boy, 
proved to be susceptible in the inferior degrees, could be subjected to 
the Magician's charms, and questioned, after being put en rapport with 
the questioner and the interpreter, I think it probable that he would 
succeed as well as the original oracle : or, if the first should not prove 
clairvoyant, a second, third, or fourth might. In my opinion, the ex- 
periment would be well w^orth trying where subjects could be had of a 
race probably so susceptible of the Mesmeric influence as the Arabs. 

Seeing what I saw, and being myself a very good mesmeric subject, 
I asked one of my friends to tell the old man that I had seen curious 
things done in England, and knew the truth of such clairvoyance as he 
professed to show; and that I would take the boy's place, I knew he 
would refuse, and plead some good reasons against it : but I desired 
my friend to take no refusal. The old man presently said I might do 
as I liked ; but he did not think it would succeed. — More charms and 
incense were burned, my hand was duly scored with ink, and the usual 
pool poured into the palm ; and I faithfully gazed into it. In two 
minutes the sensation came, though there was no hand upon my head. 
The Magician is a powerful, and, no doubt, unconscious mesmeriser. 
Presently I began to see such odd things in the pool of ink, — it grew 
so large before my aching eyes, and showed such strange moving 
shadows and clear symmetrical figures and intersecting lines, that I 
felt uncertain how long I could command my thoughts and words ; 
and, considering the number of strangers present, I thought it more 
prudent to shake off the influence while I could, than to pursue the 
experiment. The perfumes might have some effect, though I was in- 
sensible to them ; and so might the dead silence, and my steadfast 
gazing into the ink. But that there was also a strong mesmeric in- 
fluence present, I am certain. 

I hope it will not be long before some satisfactory course of mesme- 
ric experiment, like that so triumphantly pursued by Dr. Esdaile in In- 
dia, is instituted in Egypt, or at Jerusalem, with Arabs for subjects. 

As far as our knovv'ledge goes (which is but a little way, at present) 
it appears that the dark-skinned races, — as the Hindoos and the ne- 
groes, — are eminently susceptible; and it is a loss to science not to as- 
certain what they can do. — Nothing mortified me so much, in the 
course of my journey, as the being obliged to leave unused such an ap- 
parent opportunity of inquiry as I had while traveling among the 
Arabs : but in truth, I had no opportunity. We were always moving 
from place to place ; there was no one who could help me ; — and I 
needed all my own strength to meet the fatigues of traveling. I mes- 
merized a sick friend at Cairo, and found the exhaustion so great, — so 
unlike anything I ever experienced from mesmerizing at home, — that I 



SOCIETY IN CAIBO. 



257 



was warned to be prudent, for my party's sake even more than my own. 
But I wish some few of the many I met abroad who know the truth of 
mesmerism would unite to institute a course of experiments on Arab 
subjects. All the naval surgeons I met in the Mediterranean know the 
truth of Mesmerism as well as I do, and admit its importance : so do 
some eminent naval officers there ; and the Physician of the French 
Embassy in Egypt ; and the gentlemen from India who have witnessed 
what Dr. Esdaile and the Bengal Government have done; and Mr. 
Lane, and the Bishop of Jerusalem; and, in short, every man of edu- 
cation, who has really attended to the subject. Among them, there 
are some who think most of the curative powers of Mesmerism ; but 
there are others who see how infinitely more important and inte- 
resting are those of its facts which belong to Mental philosophy, and 
who feel what an illustrious foreigner expressed to me, in London, not 
long ago : " It is a shame for your country that it should be behind 
every other civilized nation, in regard to this portion of science. It is 
strange that men should be slow to investigate a powerful curative 
means. But when the same agent shows that man has a new faculty 
of the mind, — a faculty hitherto not numbered among his powers, — 
what can one say to indifference to such a discovery as that, — the great- 
est that Man has ever made, or can ever make ! It is a shame for your 
country!" If others of our countrymen abroad will follow Dr. Es- 
daile's example in using their opportunities, they may yet redeem us 
from the disgrace we lie under with the educated classes of every coun- 
try in Europe, for our want of a true philosophical spirit of inquiry and 
teachableness in regard to the facts of Mesmerism. However, we are 
wiser than we were a few years ago : and it is now a rare thing, I be- 
lieve, to meet an educated person who does not regard the subject with 
seriousness and candor, and, after inquiry, with undoubting belief to a 
greater or less extent. 

Cairo is indeed a pleasant place to spend a few weeks in, at the 
season of the year when we were there. Besides the delightful tem- 
perature, and its Arabian wonders and beauties, there is some agreeable 
society. The Hotel d'Orient and Shepherd's Hotel were quite full 
during our stay : and I believe there is seldom a time when many Eng- 
lish do not meet at Cairo,— some coming from home on their way to 
India, or for traveling objects, and others arriving from India for health 
or holiday. Then, there are the European Legations, with their hos- 
pitalities and agreeable society. And the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. 
Lieder of the Prussian Mission is known to everybody who has need- 
ed a welcome, or aid, or guidance in that strange city, so far from home. 
There is another privilege, accessible to few, but of inestimable value 
to the traveler in Egypt, which I was permitted to enjoy ; — inter- 
course with Mr. Lane and his family. There is no need for me, or 
any one, at this time of day, to say anything of Mr. Lane personally. 
His opinions and character have long taken their rank; — a rank so 
high that it is a sort of impertinence for a passing traveler to present 
them. But I have been so often asked since my return home what it 
is exactly that Mr. Lane is about at Cairo, and it concerns the best 
17 



258 



EASTERN LIFE. 



classes of Englishmen so mncli to know exactly what Mr. Lane 2*5 
about at Cairo, that I certainly ought to tell, as far as I am capable, 
how I found him occupied. 

Everybody knows Mr. Lane's reputation for x4.rabic scholarship; 
but too few know the generosity with which he has devoted himself 
to the interests of scholarship, to the injury of his private fortunes, 
and the sacrifice, for some years, of home and country. We are, 
happily, never without examples of generosity before our eyes; — the 
generosity of men of honor, the generosity of the poor, and of the 
philanthropic ; and men of science and literature have never been 
behind others in sacrificing their means, Avhether of money, time, health, 
or domestic ease, to the cause of knowledge and human improvement. 
Among these public benefactors is Mr. Lane ; and I wish the nature 
and extent of his labors and sacrifices were better known than they 
are. One gentleman has shown his sense of the public obligations to 
Mr. Lane ; — has shown that sense in the best possible way ; — by aiding 
Mr. Lane's object. The present Duke of Northumberland, when Lord 
Prudhoe, saw at once that Mr. Lane's object was one of vast im- 
portance, and that no time must be lost in accomplishing it; and he 
acted accordingly. It is owing to him that the work has advanced so 
far as that we may hope for its completion in, I believe, two years. 

It is well known to oriental scholars that no good Arabic Lexicon 
exists : and perhaps none but men of learning can fully understand 
how important it is to the world that it should have a good Arabic 
Lexicon; but it is evident enough to ordinary people that it is of con- 
sequence to our knowledge of history and ancient literature to have 
as good a key as can be found to the treasures of Arabic literature. 
There are, in the Mosques of Cairo, materials essential to the forma- 
tion of a perfect Lexicon which can be had nowhere else; these MSS. 
are crumbling to pieces so fast that, if not used now, they will be lost 
for ever; and Mr. Lane is the only competent man who has access 
to these materials. He saw the importance of the object, felt the 
pressure of the time, knew that he was the man for the work, and 
therefore devoted himself to it, in a generous negligence of his personal 
interests. He gave up a good literary income in London, the comforts 
of an English home, and the society of family and friends, and went 
to live at Cairo, working, to the injury of his health, at an unremune- 
rative labor which he well knew the world would be slow to appreciate. 
And there he toils, day by day, with his sheikh, poring over the old 
MSS., which can scarcely be touched without falling to pieces. And 
there he must toil for two years more, till his work is finished. — And 
what next? How will our Universities, and the Government, and the 
India Company show that they understand the boon which Mr. Lane 
has conferred upon them? The common notion of welcoming a book 
is, taking a single copy; or five, or ten copies. Is this what will be 
done in the case of this rare book, which it is certain the public will 
never buy ? One of the European powers understands the matter 
better than this ; — understands too that tokens of appreciation should 
be given so timely as that they may cheer the toils of the laborer, and 



MR. LANE. 



259 



assure him that he is not working in vain. The King of Prussia has 
been first, as usual, to give encouragement. Since my return, I find 
that he has sent a commissioner to Egypt, by way of London, to make 
arrangements for the establishment and diff'usion of the work. I re- 
joice at this : but I feel some shame that a foreign government should 
first have the honor — after the Duke of Northumberland— of welcom- 
ing and fostering the work of an English scholar. 

In thinking of Mr. Lane's household, and the happy hours I spent 
among them, it occurs to me to mention thus publicly (what it would 
certainly never occur to Mr. Lane and his family that I should mention 
in relation to them), the idea that struck me there, and many times 
since, — what a pity it is that such lads as his nephews are not looked 
to to occupy some such public offices in the East as are at present filled 
imperfectly from the imperfect oriental education of English youths at 
home. Here is Stanley Poole, — well educated as an English youth, 
and trained in a virtuous and religious English home in the heart of the 
East, — fit, at the same time, to live among the people of the East. all 
his days ; — speaking their languages like his mother tongue, seasoned 
to their climate, habituated to their ways, and familiar with their minds: 
— what a waste it will be if such a youth should be destined to any 
occupation in life which might as well be discharged by any other good 
and clever and accomplished Englishman, when there is such a want 
of well-qualified diplomatic and consular agents, and (what is more 
important still) scientific travelers who can make their way freely, and 
use fully their opportunities in the East ! While we keep at work 
such expensive arrangements as we have at home for the preparation of 
oriental ofiicers and agents, what a pity it seems not to use the rare 
chance, when it presents itself, of securing the services of promising 
youths in whom are united the advantages of an English and an East- 
ern education ! I say this wholly of my own accord, and without 
consultation with any one : and I shall be very glad if I find that any 
one who can act in the matter is of my opinion. 



CHAPTER XXn. 

THE HAREEM. 

I SAW two Hareems in the east; and it would be wrong to pass them 
over in an account of my travels; though the subject is as little agree- 
able as any I can have to treat. I cannot now think of the two morn- 
ings thus employed without a heaviness of heart greater than I have 
ever brought away from Deaf and Dumb Schools, Lunatic Asylums, 
or even Prisons. As such are my impressions of hareems, of course 
I shall not say whose they were that I visited. Suffice it that one was 
at Cairo and the other at Damascus. 

The royal hareems v/ere not accessible while I was in Egypt. The 
Pasha's eldest daughter, the widow of Defterdar Bey, was under hex 



260 



EASTERN LIFE. 



father's displeasure, and was, in fact, a prisoner in her own house. 
While her father did not visit her, no one else could : and while she 
was secluded, her younger sister could not receive visitors : and thus, 
their hareeras were closed. — The one which I saw was that of a gentle- 
man of high rank ; and as good a specimen as could be seen. The 
misfortune was that there was a mistake about the presence of an 
interpreter. A lady was to have met us who spoke Italian or French : 
but she did not arrive ; and the morning therefore passed in dumb show ; 
and we could not repeat our visit on a subsequent day, as we were in- 
vited to do. We lamented this much at the time : but our subsequent 
experience of what is to be learned in a hareem w^ith the aid of an in- 
telligent and kind interpretess convinced us that we had not lost much. 

Before I went abroad, more than one sensible friend had warned me 
to leave behind as many prejudices as possible ; and especially on this 
subject, on which the prejudices of Europeans are the strongest. I 
was reminded of the wide extent, both of time and space, in which 
Polygamy had existed ; and that openness of mind was as necessary 
to the accurate observation of this institution as of every other. I had 
really taken this advice to heart : I had been struck by the view taken 
by Mr. IMilnes in his beautiful poem of " the Hareem ;" and I am sure 
I did meet this subject with every desire to investigate the ideas and 
general feelings involved in it. I learned a very great deal about the 
working of the institution ; and I believe I apprehend the thoughts and 
feelings of the persons concerned in it : and I declare that if we are 
to look for a hell upon earth, it is where polygamy exists : and that as 
polygamy runs riot in Egypt, Egypt is the lowest depth of this hell. 
I always before believed that every arrangement and prevalent practice 
had some one fair side, — some one redeeming quality: and diligently 
did I look for this fair side in regard to polygamy: but there is none. 
The longer one studies the subject, and the deeper one penetrates into 
it, — the more is one's mind confounded with the intricacy of its iniquity, 
and the more does one's heart feel as if it would break. 

I shall say but little of what I know. If there were the slightest 
chance of doing any good, I would speak out at all hazards; — I would 
meet all the danger, and endure all the disgust. But there is no reach- 
ing the minds of any who live under the accursed system. It is a 
system which belongs to a totally different region of ideas from ours; 
and there is nothing to appeal to in the minds of those who, knowing 
the facts of the institution, can endure it ; and at home, no one needs 
appealing to and convincing. Any plea for liberality that we meet at 
home proceeds from some poetical fancy, or some laudable desire for 
impartiality in the absence of knowledge of the facts. Such pleas are 
not operative enough to render it worth while to shock and sadden 
many hearts by statements which no one should be required needlessly 
to endure. I will tell only something of what I saw ; and but little of 
what I thought and know. 

At ten o'clock, one morning, Mrs. Y. and I were home from our 
early ride, and dressed for our visit to a hareem of a high order. The 
lady to whose kindness we mainly owed this opportunity, accompanied 



THE HAREEM. 



261 



US, with her daughter. We had a disagreeable drive in the carriage 
belonging to the hotel, knocking against asses, horses and people all 
the way. We alighted at the entrance of a paved passage leading to a 
court which we crossed: and then, in a second court, we were before 
the entrance of the hareem. 

A party of eunuchs stood before a faded curtain, which they held 
aside when the gentlemen of our party and the dragoman had gone 
forward. Retired some way behind the curtain stood, in a half circle, 
eight or ten slave girls, in an attitude of deep obeisance. Two of them 
then took charge of each of us, holding us by the arras above the 
elbows, to help us up stairs. — After crossing a lobby at the top of the 
stairs, we entered a handsome apartment, where lay the chief wife, — 
at that time an invalid. — The ceiling was gayly painted; and so were 
the walls, — the latter with curiously bad attempts at domestic perspec- 
tive. There were four handsome mirrors; and the curtains in the 
doorway were of a beautiful shawl fabric, fringed and tasseled. A 
Turkey carpet not only covered the whole floor, but was turned up at 
the corners. Deewans extended round nearly the whole room, — a 
lower one for ordinary use, and a high one for the seat of honor. The 
windows, which had a sufficient fence of blinds, looked upon a pretty 
garden, where I saw orange trees and many others, and the fences were 
hung with rich creepers. 

On cushions on the floor lay the chief lady, ill and miserable-looking. 
She rose as we entered ; but we made her lie down again : and she was 
then covered with a silk counterpane. Her dress was, as we saw 
when she rose, loose trowsers of blue striped cotton under her black 
silk jacket; and the same blue cotton appeared at the wrists, under her 
black sleeves. Her head-dress was of black net, bunched out curiously 
behind. Her hair was braided down the sides of this head-dress be- 
hind, and the ends were pinned over her forehead. Some of the black 
net was brought round her face, and under the chin, showing the out- 
line of a face which had no beauty in it, nor traces of former beauty, 
but which was interesting to-day from her manifest illness and unhap- 
piness. There was a strong expression of waywardness and peevish- 
ness about the mouth, however. She wore two handsome diamond 
rings ; and she and one other lady had watches and gold chains. She 
complained of her head; and her left hand was bound up: she made 
signs by pressing her bosom, and imitating the dandling of a baby, 
which, with her occasional tears, persuaded my companions that she 
had met with some accident and had lost her infant. On leaving the 
hareem, we found that it was not a child of her own that she was 
mourning, but that of a white girl in the hareem: and that the wife's 
illness was wholly from grief for the loss of this baby; — a curious 
illustration of the feelings and manners of the place ! The children 
born in large hareems are extremely few : and they are usually idolized, 
and sometimes murdered. It is known that in the houses at home 
which morally most resemble these hareems (though little enough ex- 
ternally) when the rare event of the birth of a child happens, a pas- 
sionate joy extends over the wretched household: — jars are quieted, 



262 



EASTERN LIFE. 



drunkenness is moderated, and there is no self-denial which the poor 
creatures will not undergo during this gratification of their feminine 
instincts. They will nurse the child all night in illness, and pamper 
it all day with sweetmeats and toys ; they will fight for the possession 
of it, and be almost heart-broken at its loss: and lose it they must; for 
the child always dies, — killed with kindness, even if born healthy. 
This natural outbreak of feminine instinct takes place in the too popu- 
lous hareem, when a child is given to any one of the many who are 
longing for the gift: and if it dies naturally, it is mourned as we saw, 
through a wonderful conquest of personal jealousy by this general 
instinct. But when the jealousy is uppermost, — what happens then? 
— v\'hy, the strangling the innocent in its sleep, — or the letting it slip 
from the window into the river below, — or the mixing poison with its 
food; — the mother and the murderess, always rivals and now fiends, 
being shut up together for life. If the child lives, what then? If a 
girl, she sees before her from the beginning the nothingness of external 
life, and the chaos of interior existence, in which she is to dwell for 
life. If a boy, he remains among the women till ten years old, seeing 
things when the eunuchs come in to romp, and hearing things among 
the chatter of the ignorant women which brutalize him for life before 
the age of rationality comes. But I will not dwell on these hopeless 
miseries. 

A sensible looking old lady, who had lost an eye, sat at the head of 
the invalid : and a nun-like elderly woman, whose head and throat 
were wrapped in unstarched muslin, sat behind for a time, and then 
went away, after an affectionate salutation to the invalid. — Towards 
the end of the visit, the husband's mother came in, — looking like a 
litde old man in her coat trimmed with fur. Her countenance was 
cheerful and pleasant. We saw, I think, about twenty more women, 
— some slaves, — most or all young — some good-looking, but none 
handsome. Some few were black ; and the rest very light: — Nubians 
or Abyssinians and Circassians, no doubt. One of the best figures, as 
a picture, in the hareem, was a Nubian girl, in an amber-colored 
watered silk, embroidered with black, looped up in festoons, and 
finished with a black boddice. The richness of the gay printed cotton 
skirts and sleeves surprised us : the finest shawls could hardly have 
looked better. One graceful girl had her pretty figure well shown by 
a tight-fitting black dress. Their heads were dressed much like the 
chief lady's. Two, who must have been sisters, if not twins, had 
patches between the eyes. One handmaid was barefoot, and several 
were without shoes. Though there were none of the whole large 
number who could be called particularly pretty individually, the scene 
was, on the whole, exceedingly striking, as the realization of wliat one 
knew before, but as in a dream. The girls went out and came in, but, 
for the most part, stood in a half circle. Two sat on their heels for a 
time: and some went to play in the neighboring apartments. 

Cofi^'ee was handed to us twice, with all the well-known apparatus 
of jeweled cups, embroidered tray cover, and gold-flowered napkins. 
There were chibouques, of course: and sherbets in cut glass cups. 



THE HAREEM. 



263 



The time was passed in attempts to have conversation by signs ; at 
tempts which are fruitless among people of the different ideas which be 
long to diflerent races. How much they made out about us, we do 
not know : but they inquired into the mutual relationships of the party, 
and put the extraordinary questions which are always put to ladies who 
visit the hareems. — A young lady of my acquaintance, of the age of 
eighteen, but looking younger, went with her mother to a hareem in 
Cairo (not the one I have been describing), and excited great amaze- 
ment wheg obliged to confess that she had not either children or a hus- 
band. One of the wives threw her arms about her, entreated her to 
stay for ever, said she should have any husband she liked, but particu- 
larly recommended her own, saying that she was sure he would soon 
wish for another wife, and she had so much rather it should be my 
young friend, who would amuse her continually, than anybody else 
that she could not be so fond of. Everywhere they pitied us Euro- 
pean women heartily, that we had to go about traveling, and appearing 
in the streets without being properly taken care of, — that is, watched. 
They think us strangely neglected in being left so free, and boast of 
their spy system and imprisonment as tokens of the value in which 
they are held. 

The mourning worn by the lady M^ho went with us was the subject 
of much speculation : and many questions were asked about her home 
and family. To appease the curiosity about her home, she gave her 
card. As I anticipated, this did not answer. It was the great puzzle 
of the whole interview^ At first the poor lady thought it was to do her 
head good: theji, she fidgeted about it, in the evident fear of omitting 
some observance ; but at last, she understood that she was to keep it. 
When we had taken our departure, however, an eunuch was sent after 
us to inquire of the dragoman what "the letter" was which our com- 
panion had given to the lady. 

The difficulty is to get away, when one is visiting a hareem. The 
poor ladies cannot conceive of one's having anything to do ; and the 
only reason they can understand for the interview coming to an end is 
the arrival of sunset, after which it would, they think, be improper for 
any woman to be abroad. And the amusement to them of such a visit 
is so great that they protract it to the utmost, even in such a case as 
ours to-day, when all intercourse w^as conducted by dumb show. It is 
certainly very tiresome; and the only w^onder is that the hostesses can 
like it. To sit hour after hour on the deewan, without any exchange 
of ideas, having our clothes examined, and being plied with successive 
cups of cofi^ee and sherbet, and pipes, and being gazed at by a half-cir- 
cle of girls in brocade and shawls, and made to sit down again as soon 
as one attempts to rise, is as wearisome an experience as one meets 
with in foreign lands. — The weariness of heart is, however, the worst 
part of it. I noted all the faces well during our constrained stay ; and 
I saw no trace of mind in aiiy one except in the homely one-eyed old 
lady. All the younger ones were dull, soulless, brutish, or peevish. 
How should it be otherwise, when the only idea of their whole lives is 
that which, with all our interests and engagements, we consider too 



264 



EASTERN LIFE. 



prominent with us ? There cannot be a woman of them all who is 
not dwarfed and withered in mind and soul by being kept wholly en- 
grossed with that one interest, — detained at that stage in existence 
which, though most important in its place, is so as a means to ulterior 
ends. The ignorance is fearful enough ; but the grossness is revolting. 

At the third move, and when it was by some means understood that 
we were waited for, we were permitted to go, — after a visit of above 
two hours. The sick lady rose from her cushions, notwithstanding 
our opposition, and we were conducted forth with much (^servance. 
On each side of the curtain which overhung the outer entrance, stood 
a girl with a bottle of rose water, some of which was splashed in our 
faces as we passed out. 

We had reached the carriage when we were called back : — his ex- 
cellency was waiting for us. So we visited him in a pretty apartment, 
paved with variegated marbles, and with a fountain in the centre. His 
excellency was a sensible-looking man, with gay, easy and graceful 
manners. He lamented the mistake about the interpreter, and said we 
must go again, when we might have conversation. He insisted upon 
attending us to the carriage, actually passing between the files of beg- 
gars which lined the outer passage. The dragoman was so excessively 
shocked by this degree of condescension, that we felt obliged to be so 
too, and remonstrated ; but in vain. He stood till the door was shut, 
and the whip was cracked. He is a liberal-minded man ; and his ha- 
reem is nearly as favorable a specimen as could be selected for a visit; 
but what is this best specimen ? I find these words written down on 
the same day, in my journal : written, as I well remember, in heaviness 
of heart. " I am glad of the opportunity of seeing a hareem : but it 
leaves an impression of discontent and uneasiness which I shall be glad 
to sleep off. And I am not conscious that there is prejudice in this. I 
feel that a visit to the worst room in the Rookery in St. Giles' would 
have affected me less painfully. There are there at least the elements 
of a rational life, however perverted ; while here humanity is wholly 
and hopelessly baulked. It will never do to look on this as a case for 
cosmopolitan philosophy to regard complacendy, and require a good 
construction for. It is not a phase of natural early manners. It is as 
pure a conventionalism as our representative monarchy, or German 
heraldry, or Hindoo caste ; and the most atrocious in the world." 

And of this atrocious system, Egypt is the most atrocious example. 
It has unequaled facilities for the importation of black and white 
slaves; and these facilities are used to the utmost; yet the population 
is incessantly on the decline. But for the importation of slaves, the 
upper classes, where polygamy runs riol, must soon die out, — so few 
are the children born, and so fatal to health are the arrangements of 
society. The finest children are those born of Circassian or Georgian 
mothers ; and but for these, we should soon hear little more of an upper 
class in Egypt. — Large numbers are brought from the south, — the girls 
to be made attendants or concubines in the hareem, and the boys to be 
made, in a vast proportion, those guards to the female part of the 
establishment whose mere presence is a perpetual insult and shame to 



THE HAREEM. 



265 



humanity. The business of keeping up the supply of these miserable 
wretches,-— of whom the Pasha's eldest daughter has fifty for her ex- 
clusive service, — is in the hands of the Christians of Asyoot. It is 
these Christians who provide a sufficient supply, and cause a sufficient 
mortality to keep the number of the sexes pretty equal: in considera- 
tion of which we cannot much wonder that Christianity does not appear 
very venerable in the eyes of Mohammedans. 

These eunuchs are indulged in regard to dress, personal liberty, and 
often the possession of office, domestic, military, or political. When 
retained as guards of the hareem, they are in their master's confidence, 
— acting as his spies, and indispensable to the ladies, as a medium of 
communication with the world, and as furnishing their amusements, — 
being at once playmates and servants. It is no unusual thing for the 
eunuchs to whip the ladies away from a window, whence they had 
hoped for amusement; or to call them opprobrious names ; or to inform 
against them to their owner : and it is also no unusual thing for them to 
romp with the ladies, to obtain their confidence, and to try their dis- 
positions. Cases have been known of one of them becoming the friend 
of some poor girl of higher nature and tendencies than lier companions ; 
and even of a closer attachment, which is not objected to by the pro- 
prietor of both. It is a case too high for his jealousy, so long as he 
knows that the cage is secure. It has become rather the fashion to 
extenuate the lot of the captive of either sex: to point out how the 
Nubian girl, who would have ground corn and woven garments, and 
nursed her infants in comparative poverty all her days, is now sur- 
rounded by luxury, and provided for for life : and how the Circassian 
girl may become a wife of the son of her proprietor, and hold a high 
rank in the hareem: and how the wretched brothers of these slaves 
may rise to posts of military command or political confidence ; but it 
is enough to see them to be disabused of all impressions of their good 
fortune. It is enough to see the dull and gross face of the handmaid 
of the hareem, and to remember at the moment the cheerful, modest 
countenance of the Nubian girl busy about her household tasks, or of 
the Nubian mother, with her infants hanging about her as she looks, 
with face open to the sky, for her husband's return from the field, or 
meets him on the river bank. It is enough to observe the wretched 
health and abject, or worn, or insolent look of the guard of the hareem, 
and to remember that he ought to have been the head of a household 
of his own, however humble : and in this contrast of what is with what 
ought to have been, slavery is seen to be fully as detestable here as 
anywhere else. These two hellish practices, slavery and polygamy, 
which, as practices, can clearly never be separated, are here avowedly 
connected; and in that connection, are exalted into a double institution, 
whose working is such as to make one almost wish that the Nile 
v/ould rise to cover the tops of the hills, and sweep away the whole 
abomination. Till this happens, there is, in the condition of Egypt, a 
fearful warning before the eyes of all men. The Egyptians laugh at the 
marriage arrangements of Europe, declaring that virtual polygamy 
exists everywhere, and is not improved by hypocritical concealment. 



266 



EASTERN LIFE. 



The Europeans may see, when startled by the state of Egypt, that vir- 
tual slavery is indispensably required by the practice of polygamy ; 
virtual proprietorship of the women involved, without the obligations 
imposed by actual proprietorship ; and cruel oppression of the men 
who should have been the husbands of these women. And again, the 
Carolina planter, who knows as well as any Egyptian that polygamy 
is a natural concomitant of slavery, may see in the state of Egypt and 
the Egyptians what his country and his children must come to, if either 
of those vile arrangements is permitted which necessitates the other. 

It is scarcely needful to say that those benevolent persons are mis- 
taken, who believe that slavery in Egypt has been abolished by the 
Pasha, and the importation of slaves efiectually prohibited. Neither 
the Pasha nor any other human power can abolish slavery while poly- 
gamy is an institution of the country, the proportion of the sexes re- 
maining in Egypt what it is, there and everywhere else. 

The reason assigned by Montesquieu for polygamy throughout the 
East has no doubt something in it: — that women become so early 
marriageable that the wife cannot satisfy the needs of the husband's 
mind and heart: and that therefore he must have both a bride and a 
companion of whom he may make a friend. How little there is in 
this to excuse the polygamy of Egypt may be seen by an observation 
of the state of things there and in Turkey, where the same religion 
and natural laws prevail as in Egypt. In Egypt, the difficulty would be 
great of finding a wife of any age who could be the friend of a man of any 
sense : and in Turkey, where the wives are of a far higher order, poly- 
gamy is rare, and women are not married so young. It is not usual 
there to find such disparity of years as one finds in Egypt between the 
husband and his youngest wife. The cause assigned by Montesquieu 
is true in connection with a vicious state of society : but it is not insu- 
perable, and it will operate only as long as it is wished for. If any 
influence could exalt the ideas of marriage, and improve the training of 
women in Egypt, it would soon be seen that men would prefer marry- 
ing women of nearly their own age, and would naturally remain com- 
paratively constant : but before this experiment can be tried, parents 
must have ceased to become restless when their daughter reaches 
eleven years old, and afraid of disgrace if she remains unmarried long 
after tliat. 

I w^as told, while at Cairo, of one extraordinary family where there 
is not only rational intercourse and confidence at home, and some re- 
laxation of imprisonment, but the young ladies read ! — and read French 
and Italian! I asked what would be the end of this : and my inform- 
ant replied that whether the young ladies married or not, they would 
sooner or later sink down, he thouglit, into a state even less contented 
than the ordinary. There could be no suflicient inducement for se- 
cluded girls, who never saw anybody wiser than themselves, to go on 
reading French and Italian books within a certain range. For want of 
stimulus and sympath}', they would stop ; and then, finding them- 
selves dissatisfied amonof the notliings which fill the life of other wo- 
men, they would be very unhappy. The exceptional persons under a 



THE HAREEM. 



267 



bad state of things, and the beginners under an improving system must 
ever be sufferers— martyrs of their particular reformation. To this 
they may object less than others would for them, if they are conscious 
of the personal honor and general blessing of their martyrdom. 

The youngest wife I ever saw (except the swathed and veiled brides 
we encountered in the streets of Egyptian cities) was in a Turkish ha- 
reem which Mrs. Y. and I visited at Damascus. I will tell that story 
now, that I may dismiss the subject of this chapter. 1 heartily dreaded 
this second visit to a hareem, and braced myself up to it as one does 
to an hour at the dentist's, or to an expedition into the city to prove a 
debt. We had the comfort of a good and pleasant interpreter ; and 
there was more mirth and nonsense than in the Cairo hareem ; and, 
therefore, somewhat less disgust and constraint : but still it was pain- 
ful enough. We saw the seven wives of three gentlemen, and a crowd 
of attendants and visitors. Of the seven, two had been the wives of 
the head of the household, who was dead : three were the wives of 
his eldest son, aged twenty-two ; and the remaining two were the 
wives of his second son, aged fifteen. The youngest son, aged thir- 
teen, was not yet married; but he would be thinking about it soon. 
The pair of widows were elderly women, as merry as girls, and quite 
at their ease. Of the other five, three were sisters :~that is, we con- 
clude, half-sisters ;— children of different mothers in the same hareem., 
It is evident at a glance what a tragedy lies under this ; what the hor- 
rors of jealousy must be among sisters thus connected for life ;— three 
of them between two husbands in the same house ! And we were told 
that the jealousy had begun, young as they were, and the third having 
been married only a week. This young creature, aged twelve, was 
the bride of the husband of fifteen. She was the most conspicuous 
person in the place, not only for the splendor of her dress, but l3ecause 
she sat on the deewan, while the others sat or lounged on cushions on 
the raised floor. The moment we took our seats, I was struck with 
compassion for this child — she looked so grave, and sad and timid. 
While the others romped and giggled, pushing and pulling one another 
about, and laughing at jokes among themselves, she never smiled, but 
looked on listlessly. I was determined to make her laugh before we 
went away ; and at last she relaxed somewhat— smiling, and growing 
grave again in a moment : but at length she really and truly laughed ; 
and when we were shov/n the whole hareem, she also slipped her bare 
and dyed feet into her pattens inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and went 
into the courts with us, nestling to us, and seeming to lose the sense of 
her new position for the time : but there was far less of the gayety of 
a child about her than in the elderly widows. Her dress was superb; 
— a full skirt and bodice of geranium-colored brocade, embossed with 
gold flowers and leaves ; and her frill and ruffles were of geranium- 
colored gauze. Her eyebrows were frightful — ^joined and prolonged 
by black paint. Her head was covered with a silk net, in almost every 
mesh of which were stuck jewels or natural flowers : so that her head 
was like a bouquet sprinkled with diamonds. Her nails were dyed 
black; and her feet were dyed black in checkers. Her complexions 



268 



EASTERN LIFE. 



called white, was of an unhealthy yellow : and, indeed, we did not see 
a healthy complexion among the whole company ; nor anywhere 
among women who were secluded from exercise, while pampered with 
all the luxuries of eastern living. 

Besides the seven wives, a number of attendants came in to look at 
us, and serve the pipes and sherbert ; and a few ladies from a neigh- 
boring hareem ; and a party of Jewesses, with whom we had some 
previous acquaintance. Mrs. Y. was compelled to withdraw her lace 
veil, and then to take off her bonnet: and she was instructed that the 
street was the place for her to wear her veil down, and that they ex- 
pected to see her face. Then her bonnet went round, and was tried 
on many heads — one merry girl wearing it long enough to surprise 
many new comers with the joke. My gloves were stretched and pulled 
in all manner of ways, in their attempts to thrust their large, broad brown 
hands into them, one after another. But the great amusem-ent was my 
trumpet. The eldest widow, who sat next me, asked for it, and put it 
to her ear; when I said " Bo!" When she had done laughing, she 
put it into her next neighbor's ear, and said " Bo !" and in this way it 
came round to me again. But in two minutes, it was asked for again, 
and went round a second time — everybody laughing as loud as ever at 
each "Bo !" — and then a third time ! Could one have conceived it ! 
The next joke was on behalf of the Jewesses, four or five of whom sat 
in a row on the deewan. Almost everybody else was puffing away 
at a chibouque or a nargeeleh, and the place was one cloud of smoke. 
The poor Jewesses were obliged to decline joining us ; for it hap- 
pened to be Saturday : they must not smoke on the Sabbath. They 
Avere naturally much pitied : and some of the young wives did what 
was possible for them. Drawing in a long breath of smoke, they 
puffed it forth in the faces of the .Tewesses, who opened mouth and 
nostrils eagerly to receive it. Thus was the Sabbath observed, to 
shouts of laughter. 

A pretty little blue-eyed girl of seven was the only child we saw. 
She nesded against her mother ; and the mother clasped her closely, 
lest we should carry her off to London. She begged we would not 
wish to take her child to London, and said she " would not sell her 
for much money." One of the wives was pointed out to us as par- 
ticularly happy in the prospect of becoming a mother: and we were 
taken to see the room in which she was to lie in, which was all in 
readiness, though the event was not looked for for more than half a 
year. She was in the gayest spirits, and sang and danced. While 
she was lounging on her cushions, I thought her the handsomest and 
most graceful, as well as the happiest, of the party : but when she rose 
to dance, the charm was destroyed for ever. The dancing is utterly 
disgusting. A pretty Jewess of twelve years old danced, much in the 
same way ; but with downcast eyes and an air of modesty. While 
the dancing went on, and the smoking, and drinking coffee and sher- 
bet, and the singing, to the accompaniment of a tambourine, some 
hideous old hags came in successively, looked and laughed, and went 
away again. Some negresses made a good background to this tho- 



THE HAKEEM. 



269 



roughly Eastern picture. All the while, romping, kissing and scream- 
ing, went on among the ladies, old and young. At first, I thought 
them a perfect rabble ; but when I recovered myself a little, I saw that 
there was some sense in the faces of the elderly women. In the midst 
of all this fun, the interpretess assured us that " there is much jealousy 
every day ;" jealousy of the favored wife ; that is, in this case, of the 
one who was pointed out to us by her companions as so eminently 
happy, and with whom they were romping and kissing, as with the 
rest. Poor thing ! even the happiness of these her best days is hol- 
low : for she cannot have, at the same time, peace in the hareem and 
her husband's love. 

They were so free in their questions about us, and so evidently 
pleased when we used a similar impertinence about them, that we took 
the opportunity of learning a good deal of their way of life. Mrs. Y. 
and I were consulting about noticing the bride's dress, when we found 
M'e had put off too long: we were asked how we liked her dress, and 
encouraged to handle the silk. So 1 went on to examine the bundles 
of false hair that some of them wore ; the pearl bracelets on their tat- 
tooed arms, and their jeweled and inlaid pattens. — In answer to our 
question what they did in the way of occupation, they said " nothing;" 
but when we inquired whether they never made clothes or sweetmeats, 
they replied " yes." — They earnestly wished us to stay always ; and 
they could not understand why we should not. My case puzzled them 
particularly. I believe they took me for a servant; and they certainly 
pitied me extremely for having to go about without being taken care 
of. They asked what I did : and Mrs. Y., being anxious to do me all 
honor, told them I had written many books: but the information was 
thrown away, because they did not know what a book was. Then we 
informed them that I lived in a tield among mountains, where I had 
built a house ; and that I had plenty to do ; and we told them in what 
way : but still they could make nothing of it but that I had brought the 
stones with my own hands, and built the house myself. There is 
nothing about which the inmates of hareems seem to be so utterly 
stupid as about women having anything to do. That time should be 
valuable to a woman, and that she should have any business on her 
hands, and any engagements to observe, are things quite beyond their 
comprehension. 

The pattens I have mentioned are worn to keep the feet and flowing 
dress from the marble pavement, which is often wetted for coolness. 
I think all the ladies here had bare feet. When they left the raised 
floor on which they sat, they slipped their feet into their high pattens, 
and went stumping about, rather awkwardly. I asked Dr. Thompson, 
who has admission as a physician into more houses than any other 
man could familiarly visit, whether he could not introduce skipping- 
ropes upon these spacious marble floors. I see no other chance of the 
women being induced to take exercise. They suff'er cruelly from in- 
digestion, — gorging themselves with sweet things, smoking intempe- 
rately, and passing through life with more than half the brain almost 
unawakened, and with scarcely any exercise of the limbs. Poor things ! 



270 



EASTERN LIFE. 



our going ^vas a great amusement to them, they said; and they showed 
this by their entreaties to the last moment that we would not leave them 
yet, and that we would stay always. — "And these," as my journal 
says, " w^ere human beings, such as those of Vv^hom Christ made friends ! 
■ — The chief lady gave me roses as a farewell token. — The Jewish 
ladies, who took their leave with us, wanted us to visit at another house : 
but v\^e happily had not time. — I am thankful to have seen a hareem 
under favorable circumstances ; and I earnestly hope I may never see 
another." 

I kept those roses, however. I shall need no reminding of the most 
injured human beings I have ever seen, — the most studiously depressed 
and corrupted women whose condition I hav^e witnessed: but I could 
not throw away the flowers which so found their way into my hand 
as to bespeak for the wrongs of the giver the mournful remembrance 
of my heart. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PRESENT CONDITION OF EGYPT. 

I FIND in my journal the following complaint. " One pregnant 
fact here is that one can get no reliable information from the most 
reliable men. About matters on which there ought to be no difference 
of statement, we meet with strange contradictions ; such as the rate 
and amount of tax, (fee. In fact, there are no data; and there is little 
free communication. Even a census does not help. The present 
census, we are told, will be a total failure — so many will bribe the offi- 
cials to omit their names, because of the poll-tax." Thus it is that 
neither I nor any other traveler can give accounts of any value of the 
actual material condition of the people of Egypt. But we have a sub- 
stantial piece of knowledge in this very negation of knowledge. We 
know for certain that a government is bad, and that the people are un- 
prosperous and unhappy in a country where there is a great ostentation 
of civilization and improvement, side by side with mystery as to the 
actual working of social arrangements, and every sort of evasion on the 
part of the people. Vie have a substantial piece of knowledge in the 
fact that men of honor, men of station, men of business, men of courage, 
who have all the means of information which the place and time per- 
mit, differ in opinion and statement about every matter of importance 
on which they converse with inquiring strangers. I saw several such 
men. They were quite willing to tell me what they knew; and they 
assigned frankly the grounds of their opinions and statements: but what 
I obtained was merely a mass of contradictions so extraordinary that 
I cannot venture to give any details : and if I give any general impres- 
sions, it can be only under the guard of a declaration that I am sure of 
nothing, and can offer only what I suppose on the whole to be an in- 
dication of the way in which the government of Mohammed Alee works. 



PRESENT CONDITION OF EGYPT» 



271 



Of the Pasha himself I have little or nothing to say. It is a mere 
impertinence for a passing traveler to estimate the character of the 
man. That will be a study for the future historian; and it ought to 
be a wise historian who will hereafter review the life of the man, from 
its beginning to its close, estimating his temperament, his position, his 
intercourses and his opportunities, so as to decide on his personal 
merits, — to judge him as a man. It may be easier to estimate his 
relation to his people as a matter of fact, apart from the question of 
his personal value : but I know of no man in the country who is quali- 
fied to do this : and of course no stranger who is anxious not to mislead, 
will attempt it. — I never saw the Pasha, except once in his carriage. 
He was gone up the river, to look about him and depose Selim Pasha, 
when we returned to Cairo. And if it had not been so, we could 
merely have seen him by meeting him in the gardens at Shoobra, or 
in some such transient way as would have yielded us no real knowledge 
about him. — Having thus explained how small were our means of in- 
formation, I will bring together here the few fragments I could collect 
of knowledge or probability. 

One thing is certain : that, in his endeavors to improve the civiliza- 
tion of his people, Mohammed Alee has omitted the first step, which 
is essential to all substantial advance. He has given them no security 
of property or other rights. Moreover, he seems to be unaware that this 
security is the only ground of improvement. He appears never to 
have learned that national welfare can arise from no other basis than 
national industry; and that there can be no reliable national industry 
where no man is sure of receiving the rewards of his labor. He ap- 
pears not to see that public works, of whatever magnitude and utility, are 
merely monumental as long as the people who are to work at them have 
to be caught like game, marched to the spot, and kept there by com- 
panies of soldiers, and paid at his mere v/ill and pleasure ; — such of 
them as are not killed ofi" by his mistakes in the provision of food and 
labor-saving tools. He appears never to have considered that schools, 
however grand in expense, and in their appearance on paper, will not 
enlighten the people at large while parents snatch up their children 
and hide them, on the mere rumor of the approach of his recruiting 
parties, or maim the young creatures in time to prevent their being 
chosen for the schools at all. He seems not to see that the love of 
knowledge cannot grow among the people while he sets his schooling 
before them as an evil for which he gives in compensation money, 
maintenance, and the prospect of a handsome provision in life. He 
appears not to see that his people cannot become orderly tax-paying 
subjects while every peasant is liable to ruin whenever his next neighbor 
fails to pay his dues. The moment the tax-collector is mentioned, 
the inhabitants of a village will fly to the mountains, and hide there, 
leaving their crops and goods at the mercy of the government officers : 
and it does not strike their prince that such a flight is not a step in 
civilization. He appears to forget that the people will not become 
more religious while he possesses himself of the endowments of 
mosques, promising to keep up their condition, but so neglecting to do 



272 



EASTERN LIFE. 



SO as that all go to decay but those which have strong claims on the piety 
of the Mohammedans. He does not perceive that lands will not be 
the better tilled for his seizing on them, while the title deeds are care- 
fully concealed, in hope of a favorable change by and by. He does 
not see that every man is discouraged from improving his condition 
while the bad faith of the government, through the corruption of its 
agents, is a matter of course; — the general rule, to which the fellah 
and the journeyman find no exceptions. The Pasha may, if he can 
find the means, cover the land with his public works, his schools, his 
factories, and his catde from Dongola ; but his people will continue to 
decline in numbers and resources till he can induce a certain portion 
of them to endeavor to improve their own condition. Among his 
many enterprises, this, which should have been the first, appears never 
to have entered his head. That the population is declining, I have 
myself no doubt. One official gentleman may point to the plague and 
cholera as the causes of a merely temporary depopulation of particular 
spots, which indicates nothing of the condition of the whole country; 
and another may reckon up the new canals made in his time: but these 
considerations are no set ofi" against the evidence there is of decreasing 
numbers, and of the extent of land perpetually going out of cultivation. 
It is clear that the truth will not be learned by means of a census, while 
the agents take bribes to set down a greater or smaller number, or have 
to make a guess at the population of a village which they find deserted. 
If the population be decreasing, the fact may be for a while concealed 
by stout denial: if it be increasing, the fact must soon show itself, to 
the satisfaction of everybody, in a country which certainly once con- 
tained above three times the number of the present inhabitants, while 
exporting food to a wide range of neighboring states. In a country 
where there is so much more than room for everybody, so much fer- 
tility ready to every one's hand, an increase of population must be 
rapid and evident, under circumstances which admit of it at all; and 
if, in such a country, there is no evident increase, but a general per- 
suasion of its decline, what can be thought of its ruler's boast of advancing 
civilization! — There was a time when the Nile Valley was regularly 
inhabited by a population of 8,000,000. The number of setded in- 
habitants is believed to be now not more than 2,500,000 ; and it is, to 
all appearance, still declining, as it has been from the beginning of 
the century. 

I cannot say that I saw much during my voyage which could serve 
as material for an opinion on this subject: but I saw something. I 
saw one new canal in Upper Egypt; and, to set against this, 1 saw 
many and large tracts of land let out of cultivation, showing evident 
signs of former irrigation and drainage, and sprinkled over, or bordered 
by ruined cottages or villages. I saw a few factories struggling for 
existence, while it was evident to English eyes that the only security 
for their permanency was in the improvement of agriculture; — the 
natural occupation of the Egyptians, and that to which Nature per- 
petually invites them, and for which she Avould reward them, if the 
tyranny and bad faith of Man did not interfere. But how is agriculture 



PRESENT CONDITION OF EGYPT. 



273 



to improve under such arrangements as the following? — The cultivator 
undertakes to till a certain quantity of land, — all the land, it is under- 
stood, being the Pasha's property, except such as he pensions or gratifies 
certain parties with. Some, I am aware, declare that private property 
in land, of a much older date than the Pasha's life, does exist to a great 
extent. Others, whom I think higher authority, say there is little or 
none, though the title deeds of a large quantity are hidden away, in 
hope of better times. — And, by the way, what a telling fact it is that 
there should be any doubt about such a point as this among well-in- 
formed men on the spot! — At all events, whether the land is the Pasha's 
or another's, the cultivator engages, in return for being furnished with 
all that is needful for its cultivation, to hand over a stipulated amount 
(not proportion) of the produce, after harvest. He receives, among 
other requisites, an order for a good and sufficient quantity of seed- 
corn from the government granary. — When he presents the order, the 
great official gentleman at the granary directs a subordinate officer to 
supply the applicant with three-quarters of the specified quantity, he 
retaining the other quarter for his own fee. The second officer sub- 
tracts a second quarter; and the cultivator sows his land with half the 
proper seed. Of course, when it comes up thin, he considers what 
he shall do. The probability is that at harvest time, he will go out 
in the night, and filch from his neighbors' fields, while those neighbors 
may be in his fields, doing the like. When the day of reckoning 
comes, one or more of the neighbors (it may be remembered that some 
of my party saw eight), may be chained and led off to be bastinadoed 
for nonpayment of dues. Or, as some other friends of mine saw, the 
Pasha may send a force to seize the land of a whole district, because 
some of the cultivators may be unable, or be supposed to be unable, 
to pay their rent. — While such is the state of things, and in the absence 
of any promise of improvement, the stranger does not see how manu- 
factures should grow out of the agriculture of Egypt, or an increasing 
population out of either. Nor is it easy to suppose that any cir- 
cumstances which may lie out of the stranger's sight can neutralize 
such facts as these. 

The state of affairs] does not seem to be mended by the Pasha's 
practice of giving away his villages, — which is the same thing as 
giving away the people who inhabit them. When, for instance, it is 
inconvenient to pay to any claimant or favorite five hundred purses a 
year, the Pasha will give half the money and five or six villages. 
Then, of course, the uncertainty of the peasant's lot at best is aggra- 
vated by new liabilities: he depends on the temper, fortunes and 
business habits of his new proprietor, while he is not relieved from 
the corruption of the agents with whom he has to deal. The mischief 
of the Middleman system exists everywhere, whoever be the proprie- 
tor; and while the proprietor may make matters worse than the ave- 
rage, he can hardly lighten the evils of such a system, in any one 
village. — As might be expected, no such spectacle is ever seen as a 
native bettering his condition, or attempting to do so. A foreigner, 
whether he be a slave from Circassia, or a man of science from France, 
18 



274 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Italy or England, may rise to high honors and great wealth ; but if any 
native born Egyptian can improve his rank and fortunes, I never heard 
of such ; and it is certain that the people generally have no other view, 
no further hope, than obtaining bare necessaries from season to season; 
and I might say, in regard to too many, from day to day. 

And now, what are we to think of the boasted public works of Egypt? 
By all means let them proceed, if they aid production and transit. For 
as much as they are good in themselves, let them proceed. But let it 
be remembered that public works in Egypt do not arise from a firm 
foundation of national industry, and that the people who work at them 
are virtually slaves. The case is just the reverse of that of the public 
works of Ancient Egypt. The old Pharaohs, natives of the Nile 
Valley, raised their mighty palaces and temples by the hands of the 
captives they brought into slavery from foreign lands. Now we see 
the opposite case of a Greek ruler, his throne surrounded by foreigners, 
raising the monuments of his reign by the hands of the enslaved nation 
whom he calls his subjects. Those who can may choose between the 
two cases for preference. In each case, there is much vain-glory in 
the enterprise, and much barbarism in the way of carrying it out. The 
old Pharaoh thought to honor his gods, according to the morality of 
his time, and made no pretence of benefiting his slave-laborers. The 
modern Pasha does homage to the morality of his time by professing 
to aim at the good of his people; but he outrages every right and every 
interest of the many thousands who are driven to work at his patriotic 
enterprises. As we have seen, nearly a hundredth part of the whole 
present population of the country (23,000 out of 2,500,000) were 
killed off in six months, in the making of the Mahmoudieh canal. 
After such an experiment as this, the prosecution of other public works 
by laborers no better fitted and prepared to achieve and desire them, 
appears to those on the spot a barbarism equal to any that can be 
charged upon any heathen temple-builder of them all. 

As for other laboring classes than the cultivators, — the boatmen are, 
I am told, the most fortunate, and therefore the most intelligent and 
prudent. They are sure of the money they earn, and are exempt from 
the extortion which ruins the fortunes, and breaks the spirit of other 
classes of laborers. As for the insecurity and extortion, almost all the 
working classes seem as badly off as the cultivator. Everybody has 
heard of Ibraheem Pasha's fine garden at Roda. The laborers in that 
garden are paid nominally a piastre and a quarter per day. Out of 
this, they have to feed themselves. This they might possibly do, if 
they really received the money : but they are paid in corn, or some 
other produce which it is convenient so to dispose of ; and this produce 
is reckoned at a price higher than they can obtain for it. 

At the Sugar-refinery, near this garden of Ibraheem Pasha's, the 
people are paid with molasses, in a similar manner; and, in addition, 
they have to bribe the measurer of the molasses to give them due mea- 
sure, — it being an understood thing that he will help himself out of 
either their purses or their molasses. 

While on the subject of the Pasha's public works, it should be 



PRESENT CONDITION OF EGYPT. 



275 



remembered, in justice to him, that he is under strong stimulus to pro- 
secute them. I am not, as I said before, attempting to estimate the 
character of the Pasha, but only to tell the very little I could learn of 
the condition of his people: but while his public works, with all their 
ostentation, stand in such mournful contrast with the misery of his 
people, it would be unjust to him not to mention that he has about him 
men of various European nations, who endeavor to serve both their 
national and individual interests by stimulating him to enterprises in 
which they may be wanted, or their country may be served. However 
shrewd the old man may be on the whole, however he may amuse 
himself by receiving flatteries and holding out hopes, and hanging out 
caprices, he cannot, in his state of crude civilization, be always clear- 
sighted and prudent. He may be easily dazzled by the glory proposed 
to him of doing something which shall make France and England won- 
der; something which shall make the whole world think him the most 
patriotic ruler in it. 

At the same time, we see how cautious he can be about matters 
which he really understands. Some people on the spot, as well as 
many at a distance, wonder that a man who acted so wisely and well 
as the Pasha did about our communication with India, when nothing 
better could have been hoped from him than that he would have closed 
the passage through Egypt, should not yet have made a canal or rail- 
way to the Red Sea, as he is incessantly urged to do. Those who so 
wonder may be assured that there is more in the matter than has been 
presented to them. It is a case which the Pasha happens to under- 
stand, and about which he chooses to take his time, and to judge for 
himself. He knows all about the shallows at both ends of the proposed 
ship canal, and he knows also the precise depth of the interests engaged 
in the railway scheme. He has amused himself by seeing locomotives 
run on a little railway before his palace: he looked, and laughed, and 
stroked his beard, and talked of the devil being in it; and he has some 
reason to think that the devil would be in it indeed if he should be in 
a hurry to lay down the rails which, as he knows, lie at hand, wanting 
to be used. He knows what a devil he would raise among the Be- 
doueens if he rashly took from them the carriage of persons and goods 
through the Desert. What could he do with these wild tribes, if he 
deprived them of their only profitable employment? And how could 
he compensate them for the loss of the Desert transport by which they 
now live? If the railway did not interfere with the Bedoueens, being 
used only for India passengers and their luggage and the mails, it may 
be asked whether it would answer to the Pasha to make a railroad for 
this purpose merely, and to receive the proceeds only twice a month. 
He may think that an inland canal, from the Nile to Suez, would an- 
swer better, as it would be in use every day for the transport of corn 
and other produce. He may think that the whole matter, however 
important to England, may be so dubious in regard to Egypt as not to 
be hastily proceeded in at the risk of rousing the Bedoueens to harass 
the country. If he appears to people in London and Paris as dilatory 
and uncertain about undertaking either of these works as he has been 



276 



EASTERN LIFE. 



rash and positive about others, it is clear that there must be a reason 
for his new slowness and uncertainty: and that reason may be other 
than one of foreign policy. When I hear that either canal or railroad 
is certainly begun in earnest, and not merely surveyed for, I shall beUeve 
that it may be at work in time. Till then, I am not disposed to think 
we shall have either during the old man's life. If he goes seriously 
into the undertaking at all, I think he will make a canal. If he makes 
a canal, I think it will be an inland one, — from the Nile to Suez. And 
if he makes a railroad, I think it will not be the English one which has 
been so earnesdy pressed on his attention, both from England and on 
the spot. The only thing I am sure of, however, is that people at 
home had better not decide what the Pasha ought to do, and represent 
the matter as a very plain and simple one. For my own part,— while 
seeing as distinctly as any one the advantage to my own country of an 
improved passage across the Isthmus of Suez, and after having learned 
on the spot all that I could on every side, I see that it is a matter so 
complicated at present with difficulties of many kinds, that I am glad 
not to be obliged to form an opinion on what ought to be done. 

I really feel very doubtful about sending this chapter through the 
press, — so meager as it is, and yet so vague. I could have made it 
much fuller, and far more interesting and distinct, if I had written down 
what I was told, — or either side of what I was told. But, as I said 
before, I could not rely on the information, while entirely relying on 
the honor of those who kindly gave it. I have thought it best to offer 
only the little that I believe to be true. Of this little I cannot say how 
much might be modified by facts which may lie behind; and I feel that 
I know scarcely anything of the modern Egyptian polity but the sig- 
nificant fact that nothing can be certainly known. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

GARDENS OF RODA AND SHOOBRA.—HELIOPOLIS.— PETRIFIED FO- 
REST.— TOMBS OF THE MEMLOOK KINGS.— THE NmOMETER.— 
LEAVING CAIRO. 

The roses which hang over the wall of the garden in the island of 
Roda are a pleasant sight to the traveler returning from the south. 
As some of our party had letters to the gentleman who is in charge of 
the place, we went to see it. The fame of this garden proves how 
difficult it must be to have a good garden at Cairo. Besides the roses 
(which were not abundant) we saw a few anemones and violets ; and 
that was nearly all. The fruits are oranges, dates and bananas, excel- 
lent; grapes, pretty good ; peaches and nectarines not good; melons 
bad. Neither fruits nor flowers can satisfy one who knows what gar- 
dening is in Europe. Sometimes, there is drought; and then again, 
the river comes up occasionally to destroy everything, — to drown the 
garden. There is to be a steam-engine to water the place with; and 



HELIOPOLlt* 



277 



thus the drought will be kept off. — I believe it is the fashion to admire 
this garden, and to imagine it peopled by the Houris of Ibraheera 
Pasha's hareem. We were told by the gardener that the ladies had 
been twice ; but that their going was an exceptional event. This gen- 
tleman can hardly wish it otherwise if, as I believe is true, these wives 
of a grey-bearded man behave like disorderly children, doing mischief 
to the flower-beds in their senseless play. — The only thing that struck 
me as at all beautiful in any part of the garden was an elegant bamboo, 
which was a treat to the eye. Everywhere else it was painful to see 
the attempt at making an English garden of an arid plot, where it 
seemed as if all the plants had quarreled, and were trying how far 
apart they could keep. 

, We were delighted, after this, with the Pasha's garden at Shoobra. 
It has a character appropriate to the country. It is formal, but exceed- 
ingly pretty; studded thick with parterres of roses, geraniums and 
stocks ; and thick set as possible with orange and lemon trees. The 
Djebel is charming ; — the hill ascended by a succession of terraces 
connected by a trellised ascent, which conducts to a fine point of view. 
Such a formal and blossomy garden is in strong contrast with scenery 
round ; and the true charm of a garden is there accordingly. We 
thought it the only place worthy of the name that we had seen in 
Egypt. — The kiosks round the central fountain are beautiful ; and one 
of them is a truly splendid apartment. If the ordinary gas-lamps were 
absent, and better glass present in the windows, and more flowers 
about the fountain, this spot would nearly fulfil our ideas of garden 
luxury in the East. — I cannot imagine why the Pasha's windows are 
so badly glazed. In these days of universal plate glass, it is strange 
to look round the apartments of his palaces, and see his brilliant furni- 
ture, and gorgeous bijoux from Paris contrasting with the coarse, 
greenish, seamed window panes. I would advise the European power 
which is most anxious to propitiate Mohammed Alee to send him out 
a freight of plate glass windows. I can assure such European power 
that a vast commotion of envy and jealousy will be excited in those 
circles where every present made to the Pasha is regarded as an event 
in the politics of the world. Come, now! which of the politicians of 
the world will be quickest to glaze the Pasha's windows ? 

The ride from Cairo to Shoobra is the pleasantest we found in the 
neighborhood ; I might almost call it the only one. It is under an 
avenue of picturesque spreading trees, chiefly acacias, through which 
the tilled lands on either hand show themselves, refreshing the eyes. 
The Nile, spreading abroad in reaches, or flowing between shoals, is 
visible also; to-day in a state of singular commotion, from the strength 
of the wind. The dust flew in clouds, and the river broke in waves 
over the shoals. 

It was just such weather the day (February 19th) we went to that 
mournful place, — old Heliopolis. We were to have made our first 
trial of camel-riding that day ; but the wind was too high, though it 
might permit us to ride lowlily, on our asses, through the fenced and 
cultivated country, which lies between Cairo and the solitary obelisk. 



278 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Our ride was pleasant enough while it was among fields, and under the 
shelter of hedges and avenues of acacia. On our return by a different 
route, we were almost strangled with wind and sand. 

The obelisk looks well from a distance, springing from among trees: 
but as the sole relic of the once brilliant little city, the University of 
old Egyptian learning, it is a mournful object enough. When one 
comes near, one finds its very hieroglyphics filled up and plastered 
over by the wild bees. Round its base there is a hollow, fruitlessly 
dug to ascertain how deep its platform lies. The surface of the land 
must have risen very much. Yet the circuit of mounds indicates 
where the remains of the city lie. This circuit of mounds is what one 
should come to Heliopolis to see. It is a moment not to be forgotten 
when one stands at the foot of the obelisk, and looks round through 
trees and over-stretches of sand at these mounds, and thinks of .Joseph 
coming here to fetch his wife, and celebrating the marriage with all the 
courtly and priestly pomp of the time ; — and of Moses, sitting here at 
the feet of the priests, nurtured with such care and wisdom as would 
be given to the education of the son of Pharaoh's daughter: — and of 
Plato, dwelling within this circuit for thirteen years, as it is said, and 
almost daily perhaps, in all that time, passing the spot where we are 
standing now, and looking up at the tapering lines of sculptures, as we 
are now looking up at the bee-cells with which those sculptures are 
filled up. This was one glimpse more into the old world of Egypt, 
after the cloud curtain had seemed to cover all. After yielding this 
brief glimpse, it closed again, to open no more. 

On our return, we were taken to see, in a sort of garden, the tree of 
Joseph and Mary ; a very old sycamore, under which, as Jews and 
Mohammedans alike believe, the Holy Family reposed when they 
fled into Egypt, — by this honor rendering the tree immortal, — as one 
would think it must be, if this be really it. 

In this direction lies the (so-called) Petrified Forest; an absurd 
name, meant probably to convey the fact that the quantity of petrified 
wood is surprisingly large. The ride to this spot is so interesting that 
it matters little what lies at the end of it. After threading the narrow 
ways of the city, we emerged by the fine " gate of Victory," — the Bab 
e' Nusr, — into the eastern Desert, in view of the Tombs of the Mem- 
look Kings, past whose courts and domes and minarets we rode in 
among the sandhills. We had a fine view of the road to Suez, which 
wound away to our left ; and then we entered the region of rock and 
sand, of heat and drought, where, in a few days, we were to make our 
home for many weeks. In about an hour, we began to note some odd- 
looking stones lying about in the sand, and among ordinary looking 
pebbles. These were pieces of petrified wood. As we advanced, 
they lay thicker ; and before we returned, we had certainly seen an 
astonishing quantity. Fragments of palm trunks, approaching to the 
size of logs, were perhaps the commonest kind: but there were several 
kinds of wood ; even the bamboo was there, with its joints distinctly 
visible. 

Of course, we visited the Tombs of the Memlook Kings, — commonly 



TOMBS OF THE MEMLOOK KINGS. 



279 



but erroneously called the Tombs of the Caliphs. What a descent 
from the tombs of the Kings that we had seen up the river! Yet these 
well repay a visit; and it may be worth while to describe one of them, 
very briefly. These tombs look almost as well when one rides among 
them as from the terrace of the citadel, where one is so struck with the 
pale yellow domes and minarets, rising against their ground of darker 
sand. Now those domes and spires stood up bright and sharp against 
the cloudless sky. Round the base of the dome of some are inscrip- 
tions in colored tiles, white letters on a dark blue or other ground. 
Some of the walls outside are in courses of yellowish white and red, 
alternately; the white being the limestone of the neighboring hills, and 
the red a mere daub of paint upon the stones. These tombs are going 
to decay so fast, that the next generation of travelers will see but little 
of them. Some of the walls are slanting to their fall : others show 
gaping rents ; and many stones are carried away by the builders of 
some new edifice. 

The threshold across which we stepped into the enclosure of one of 
these tombs was of gray granite, split down the very middle of an an- 
tique sculptured figure, whose cartouche remained entire. Thus do 
men go on making for themselves inviolable tombs by violating those 
of their predecessors ! This fractured sculpture was laid down for a 
door-step over which the kingly pride of this Memlook sultaun might 
pass to its last repose: and now men cross this threshold, to carry 
away the stones of the newer edifice — but not to serve for another 
royal tomb. 

Within the court, we found a dry and meager bit of garden, and a 
well covered with a shattered wooden dome. Along two sides of the 
court were dwellings ; those of one side ruined ; those of the other in- 
habited by tenants who have them free. There is no competition for 
these almshouses ; for the people are becoming fewer in the land, and 
there is plenty of houseroom. Apartments as good as these, and more 
convenient for situation, may be had in Cairo for next to nothing ; and 
there is therefore no eagerness to live rent free in this place. On a 
third side is a wall, with a beautiful minaret at one corner. This mina- 
ret is fast going to ruin : but one of the gentlemen made his way to its 
upper gallery, whence he obtained a fine view — even to the second 
station on the Suez road. On the fourth side of the court is the Mosque, 
with the tomb of the sultaun at one end, and that of his hareem at the 
other, each under a dome. The loftiness of this range was very strik- 
ing: and indeed I never was in any mosque where I did not wonder 
afresh at the height of the dome, and the magnificence of the spring of 
the pillars. The handsome stairs and pulpit of the mosque, and its 
rich covered and inlaid screens, are rotting away. The sordid decay 
was a desolate spectacle. 

From hence we went to see a Coptic church, which we found altogether 
disgusting, from its profane altar-piece to the swarms of fleas which 
inhabit its matting. There was a handsome carved screen ; but no- 
thing else that we could bear to look at. The pictures of saints were 
most audacious ; and as for the altar-piece — any Mohammedan who 



280 



EASTERN LIFE. 



ever saw its central figure would be quite justified in classing these 
Christians with low idolaters. It may be well to look into these places, 
to learn to be just towards the originals of other corrupted faiths, whose 
symbols may no more represent their primitive ideas than these Coptic 
pictures represent Christianity. 

On Saturday the 20th, the weather was suitable for our first attempt 
at camel-riding; and we went to the Nilometer. We had committed the 
ordering of the apparatus to those whose business it was, and who were 
supposed to understand the matter: and they had prepared for Mrs. Y. 
and me wooden boxes or chairs, instead of saddles. In these we set 
out from the Hotel d'Orient. The swaying motion, and the being car- 
ried as dead weight, were excessively disagreeable, and especially to 
one so fond of riding as I am. Being carried on a camel is too little 
like riding at best: but while one is on a saddle, and holds a rein, one 
may amuse one's self with the semblance : but the being carried in a 
chair permits no such relief. Moreover, it is impossible so to fasten on 
the chair as that it shall never slip in the least on one side ; and the lean- 
ing sensation is intolerable. It seemed very doubtful to me how long 
I could support this method of traveling; and I wondered what was to 
be done if my companion and I should have to protest against it in the 
middle of the Desert. Happily we were seen by Linant Bey, whom 
we met at dinner afterwards, at the Consul General's. He has traveled 
over more miles of desert than almost any civilized man, and knows all 
about it: and he told us at once that we must leave our chairs behind, 
and adopt such a method of cushioning our saddles as he would instruct 
us in. Before dinner was over, he was sent for, to follow the Pasha 
up the river immediately: but his instructions set us on our camels to 
the best advantage. I often afterwards rejoiced that he had chanced to 
see us that day. 

We met in this ride two or three sons of Ibraheem Pasha's — gentle- 
manly and lively-looking boys. We crossed by a ferry boat to the 
island of Roda, to see the Nilometer, which I was surprised to find a 
very pretty place ; — a damp, dim chamber, tufted with water weeds ; — 
steep stairs down into it ; and a green pool and mud at the bottom : — 
in the centre, a graduated pillar: — in the four sides of the chamber, 
four pointed arches — one filled in with an elegant grating : — round the 
cornice, and over the arches, Cufic inscriptions; and in two of the 
niches, within the arches, similar inscriptions. The crypt-like aspect 
of the chamber, with its aquatic adornments of weeds and mosses — so 
perfectly in accordance with its purpose — was charming, the charm 
being aided perhaps by a sense of the unique character of the place. 
I need not say that we did not see the base of the graduated pillar. 
We are told that it is never seen, even when the Nile is at the lowest, 
the yearly nominal cleaning out leaving yet a considerable deposit of 
mud. We were glad to have seen the Nilometer ; and this was our 
last sight-seeing at Cairo — unless it was the Ezbekeeyeh, the next day. 

The great square of the Ezbekeeyeh is always gay on Sundays, when 
the Franks walk there after church, and the Mohammedans sit smoking 
in groups to watch them. Some of the returned pilgrims further enli- 



LEAVING CAIRO. 



281 



vened it this day. There were a few tents, and some conjurors ; and 
pilgrims walking with a flag and singing: and then they formed into a 
circle, and one man chanted prayers. The eastern and western groups, 
— the turbans and burnooses here, and the French bonnets and mantles 
there, — all among the dark acacias, or crossing the gleams of bright sun- 
shine, make a strange picture, not to be likened to anything I saw after- 
wards. 

Monday, the 22d, was our packing day. I was to carry nothing that 
would not travel in saddle-bags : so I took care that my saddle-bags 
should be very large. Having stuffed them with necessaries, — not for- 
getting plenty of paper and ink, — I put away all finery and delicate 
articles of dress or use, in trunks which were to meet us at Alexandria, 
three months afterwards. What kind of appearance I was to make 
at Jerusalem and Damascus, it was useless to consider now. Saddle- 
bags will not carry bonnets, caps and dresses which will not bear crush- 
ing; and all such were therefore left behind. — The hems of our gowns 
told rather a sad tale of the state of the floors in our hotel. We could 
only hope that the Desert would prove a cleaner floor. We had done 
our best by remonstrance here ; but the answer to our petition to have 
our rooms cleaned was decisive : — it would be useless to clean our 
rooms, as they would be dirty again to-morrow! We had not our 
remedy in our own hands, as Swift had with his man Ralph; so we 
were obliged to be patient. 

Remembering the scarcity of water which we were about to encoun- 
ter for some weeks, I washed and dried this day the few things which 
remained over from the hands of the washerman. The occasion was 
more strange than the employment ; and strangely I felt it. Here we 
were going to spend weeks in the newest scene and way of life the 
world could offer us. We were going into the dreariest wastes of the 
globe, with no means of existence but those which we carried with us. 
We were going to spend weeks among rocks and sands, wild Arabs, 
glaring suns, scorching winds, and a poor sprinkling of brackish pools. 
How should we like it? How should I, for one, bear it? How could 
I tell beforehand ? I had had some experience, in former years, of the 
hardships of travel in rude countries : but I had never tried anything 
like this. — More strange still was the thought of what we were going to 
see. Strange above all, perhaps, was the composure with which I let 
all the imagery of this extraordinary prospect pass before me. I could 
not detect in myself any alarm, any surprise, any kind of excitement : 
and I have little doubt of the same calmness being in the mind of 
every one of the large company who were this day preparing to set 
forth through the Desert. 

And now — as to where we were going. Before we left England, 
Mr. Y. had asked me what I thought of our going to Petra. I laughed, 
not at all supposing that he could be in earnest about English travelers, 
— and especially women, — going to Petra. In my youth I had read all 
the books of Arabian travel that I could get hold of ; and I was aware 
of the extreme difficulty and danger of passing through Idumaea in 
those times, and up to the present day : I never gave a serious thought 



282 



EASTERN LIFE. 



to the suggestion of going to Petra; nor did I suppose that anyone 
else did. 

Till within a few days of our departure, our plan had been, as a mat- 
ter of course, to go by El Arish to Hebron and Jerusalem : and again, 
Mr. Y. had asked me how I should like to go to Petra, if we found we 
could get there from Hebron ; and again I had laughed, not supposing 
him in earnest. — But a more distinct vision arose when many friends, 
residents of Cairo, and passing travelers, — I think I may say all our 
friends, — advised and urged our going to Mount Sinai. This I did 
most heartily desire ; and certainly not the less when it appeared that 
a large party of travelers, including English, Scotch and Irish, were in 
hope, — a doubtful and vague hope, but still a hope, — of penetrating 
to Petra, on their way from Sinai to Jerusalem. If they could do it, so 
might we. But still, my thoughts barely glanced towards it ; and when 
I was told the good news that we were going to Mount Sinai, I felt this 
quite enough, and did not yet look further. 

The large party I have mentioned, — a company of as kind hearts as 
one can find in a chance wandering over the world, — wished us to join 
them. AVe held off from the junction, feeling that the fatigues of desert 
traveling would be quite enough for some of us, without any addition 
from the presence of numbers. As for me, I am a particularly unso- 
ciable member of a traveling party ; as I suppose every deaf person 
must be who wishes to profit by the journey. It is impossible for a 
deaf person to listen from the ridge of a camel, and note the objects of 
travel at the same time. So my way must be to ride in silence during 
the traveling hours ; and we did not expect to have strength left for any 
evening sociability. We therefore engaged our own sheikh and escort, 
and twenty camels, wished our friendly compatriots a good journey, 
and resolved to go by ourselves. 

We were to set out on Tuesday morning, February 23d. On the 
Monday we bade farewell to our Cairo friends ; and Stanley Poole and 
his brother accompanied me to the terrace of the citadel, for one more 
enjoyment of that glorious view. — That evening, the mail from Eng- 
land arrived. In the morning, we waited for letters; and Mr. E.'s 
share detained us till after an early dinner. 

For some days our preparations had been very visible in the court- 
yard and environs of our hotel. Mr. Y.'s large tent, which was to 
house i\Irs. Y. and me, had been stoutly lined for warmth at night. — 
Our sheikh, Bishara, with his bright and genial face, had basked there 
in the sun every day, and given his advice on our afl^airs; and our 
camels had been brought to the spot. All this morning, the cross- 
grained brutes had been growling and groaning in the yard ; and when 
their loads were put on, their vicious lamentations were horrible to 
hear. — Before two, p. m., we were mounted ; and we paced forth in 
procession through the streets of Cairo. The sheikh wore under his 
blue burnoose, a brilliant dress of green satinet, striped with red and 
gold color. The gentlemen were dressed half and half. Eastern and 
European. Alee and the cook were smoking after the toils of the 



LEAVING CAIRO. 



283 



morning : — my camel-driver kissed my camel repeatedly, and allured 
the creature to stoop and offer its huge lips to the salute. 

From my high seat, I saw more of the deep, dim, wide interiors of 
the Cairo dwellings, and of the people at their trades, than I ever did 
before. This last view of the streets was the best : but there was some- 
thing mournful in passing for the last time those picturesque alleys, 
and imposing mosques, and busy bazaars, and the captivating groups 
of oriental figures of which the eye never tires. — We passed out near 
the citadel, traversed the bazaar or market which was formed outside 
the gates, and entered upon the sand of the Desert. 

I now thought camel riding as easy as sleeping on a feather bed. 
I found afterwards how little first impressions are worth in such a case ; 
but in this unexpected ease, and in the beauty about me, and the pros- 
pect of the journey before me, I was very happy, when lo ! at about 
two miles from the city, there were the green and blue and white 
tents of the British travelers ! — I supposed that they had been delayed, 
and that we should pass them : but no ! — our camels were made to lie 
down, and we were made to dismount, on reaching the camp. This 
was Bissateen; and the escort never will go further than Bissateen the 
first day, that there may be an opportunity of supplying any needful 
article that may have been forgotten. — Here we were, after all, in junc- 
tion with the British travelers ; — a junction much approved by the es- 
cort, as conducing to the safety of all parties. We separated no more 
till we left Jerusalem, nearly two months afterwards. 

We strolled about in the sunset light, bidding many a farewell to 
Cairo, which stood out clear and bright in the evening glow, — its cita- 
del predominant. The green levels between us and the Nile looked 
flatter in surface and more vivid in color than ever. Over westward 
were the Pyramids, glorious against the orange sky; and near us the 
palm grove belonging to Bissateen, and the wells where the women 
came with their water-pots and cords. Close at hand was our camp, 
with the Arabs in groups round the fires, and camels lying about as if 
they wanted to be sketched. We were not sorry now to have stopped 
for the night within sight of Cairo and the Pyramids. 

As I consider this day the last of our Egyptian life, I shall here 
close my first Part. It is true, we did not pass the Egyptian frontier 
for some days ; but our life in the Desert was so Arabian in its charac- 
ter and interests as to belong to the Arabian section of this book. 

Here, then, we take leave of Egypt, — to me by far the most interest- 
ing portion of our travels. I believe that some others did not find it so 
in the experience of their journey ; and I hope my readers may not in 
the retrospect. And yet I should like them to feel with me in regard 
to the surpassing interest of Egypt, even at the cost of their relishing 
the latter half of my book less than the first. 



PART II 



SINAI AND ITS FAITH 



" If I have beheld the Sun in his splendor. 
Or the Moon advancing in brightness; 
And my heart have been secretly enticed, 
And my mouth have kissed my hand, — 
This also were a crime to be punished by the judge ; 
For I should have denied the God who is above." 

Job, XXXI. 26-28. 

" Celsus seemeth here to me to do just as if a man traveling into Egypt, where 
the wise men of the Egyptians, according to their country-learning, philosophize 
much about those things that are accounted by them divine, whilst the idiots, in the 
meantime, hearing only certain fables which they know not the meaning of, are 
very much pleased therewith: Celsus, I say, doth as if such a sojourner in Egypt, 
who had conversed only with those idiots, and not been at all instructed by any of 
the priests in their arcane and recondite mysteries, should boast that he knew all 
that belonged to the Egyptian theology. What we have now affirmed concerning 
the difference between the wise men and the idiots amongst the Egyptians, the same 
may be said also of the Persians, amongst whom the religious rites are performed 
rationally by those that are ingenious, whilst the superficial vulgar look no further 
in the observation of them than the external symbol or ceremony." — Ongen against 
Celsius. 

" And he who had beUeved (Moses) said, ' my people, follow me : I will direct 
you into the right way O my people, how is it that I invite you unto salva- 
tion, and ye invite me unto the fire? Ye invite me to deny God, and to associate 
with Him that of which I have no knowledge; but I invite you unto the Mighty, 
the Very Forgiving.' " — Kurdn^ ch. XL. 



SINAI AND ITS FAITH. 



CHAPTER I. 

MOSES BEFORE THE EXODUS.— ROUTE TO THE RED SEA.— CAMEL- 

RIDING. 

Ii\ traveling from the Nile to Mount Sinai, the chief interest is in 
following the track of the Israelites ; and the person one thinks most of 
is Moses. 

In the island of Roda we had seen the spot where, according to tra- 
dition, his bulrush cradle was found. At Memphis, we had been in 
the place of his abode ; and at Heliopolis, in that of his education. 
According to a Mohammedan tradition, he was a learned priest of 
Heliopolis. Whether this is probable or not, he was certainly of the 
priestly caste, being adopted as a son of the royal house. At all 
events, the early part of his life, up to mature manhood, was passed in 
ease and in the leisure of learned pursuits, in the neighborhood with 
which we were now familiar, and whose natural features were deeply 
impressed upon our minds by our grateful and admiring interest in his 
history. Its natural features (from which it is impossible now to ex- 
clude the Pyramids) were, however, all we had. Every change that 
Time and Man could effect has been wrought; and we felt everywhere 
that only by its natural features could Moses himself now recognize 
the region where his mind was born and reared. The cities he knew 
are gone, and others have arisen on other sites. Of the race he knew, 
not a living man remains, and another has come into its place. 

But we were going now into the region where his purposes were 
born, reared and accomplished. We were to see objects which he 
saw, and as he saw them ; — the scene unchanged, and the people the 
same, (one may say,) whom he met ; — the same races, living in the 
same manner, and presenting the same aspect. For some weeks to 
come, we might look about us with his eyes, and become able, day by 
day, to enter more into his mind. 

He had three times crossed the Sinai peninsula on which we were 
about to enter: three times, in very different states of mind. The first 
time, he was unhappy, — his heart heavy with the sense of the degra- 
dation of his Hebrew brethren, and his fortunes scattered to the winds 
by the act of sympathy with his race, — his slaughter of one of their 
task-masters, — which had come to the knowledge of Pharaoh. Away 



288 



EASTERN LIFE. 



he went, across the peninsula, and to the opposite coast of the Eastern 
arm of the Red Sea, taking up his rest with the Midianites, who appear 
to have been more civilized than most of the tribes inhabiting the 
desert. It is supposed that they were engaged in commerce, — their 
position being favorable to it. Josephus says that the men were not 
shepherds, but left the care of their flocks to women. — The sheikh (or 
priest, for the word signifies both) whose daughter Moses married, gave 
him the charge of his flocks, it appears. — In the solitudes to which he 
now retired with his family, shifting his tent from valley to valley, 
according to the needs of his flock, and sitting down beside the secluded 
springs among the rocky mountains, his mind wrought vigorously 
among the materials stored up by his careful education. There is no 
place like the Desert for fruitful meditation. There, among the immu- 
table forms of nature, lives the Past, for those who know how to look 
for it. It will not rise to view among the changing scenes of social 
life, nor speak where the voices of men are heard. But in the austere 
silence of the Desert it presses its tale upon the tranquilized soul, and 
will, to one who knows, as Moses did then, and Mohammed after him, 
how to invoke, prophesy of the Future ; — of its unborn child which is to 
redeem the human race from its sins and its burden of woes. Here, 
as Moses sat under the shrubby palm in its moist nook, or lay under 
the shadow of the rock, did the past come, at the call of his instructed 
memory, and tell him how these mighty Egyptians had been slaves as 
his Hebrew brethren now were, and how they had cast off the yoke of 
their bondage, and risen into a powerful nationality by driving out the 
foe who had oppressed them for a thousand years, and by restoring to 
their honors the Supreme and his attributes, through whose aid they 
believed all great deeds to be achieved : and here, to his clear under- 
standing, did the future promise the redemption of his race, and disclose 
the means by which it should be wrought. Here he learned to see, — 
not at once as in vision, but in the dawning of many days, and from the 
suggestions of many thoughtful years, — how the redemption of the 
Hebrew race should be effected, how far the precedents of former times 
should be followed, and where they should be departed from ; — what 
there was new and peculiar in the circumstances of his people, and how 
these circumstances should be dealt with. He saw that the Hebrews 
could not rise in revolt against their oppressors, as the Egyptians had 
done against their Shepherd conquerors ; for the Hebrews had not the 
rights of native possession; and they were so debased by their servi- 
tude as to be incapable of warfare. He saw that they must be first 
removed from the influences which had made them what they were, 
and then elevated into a capability for independent social life. 

He saw that they must be first removed, and then educated, before 
they could be established. In following out this course of speculation, 
he was led to perceive a mighty truth, which appears to have been 
known to no man before him ; — a truth so holy and so vast that even 
yet mankind seem scarcely able fully to apprehend it; — the truth that 
all Ideas are the common heritage of all men, and that none are too 
precious to be communicated to every human mind. It was his clear 



MOSES BEFORE THE EXODUS. 



289 



apprehension of this truth, and his intrepidity in bringing it into prac- 
tice which made Moses the greatest of men, and the eternal benefactor 
of the world. He was before skilled in " all the wisdom of the Egyp- 
tians it was this which raised hira above the collective wisdom of 
all their long line of priests, and made him worth more to the human 
race than all the sages together who have been born of it. His know- 
ledge, even of spiritual things, vast as it was, was limited by the 
boundaries of his time ; but this one clear spiritual perception of human 
rights made him a benefactor for all time. — He did not rise to a higher 
view of God than his being a national god, and the greatest of gods : 
he regarded Jehovah as the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not 
as the god of the Egyptians and mankind at large : but, limited as was 
his view of God, his recognition of the spiritual rights of Man was the 
fullest and noblest that has ever been obtained, or can, perhaps, ever 
be obtained. Warned by what he had seen in Egypt, his purpose was 
to admit to the divine knowledge which he held every individual of the 
people he belonged to. By his position in the priestly class in Egypt, 
and his learning, he knew how the priests of Memphis and Heliopolis 
believed in One Supreme deity — " the Unutterable," of whom they 
uttered not a word to any beyond their own class; and he had seen 
how they presented to the people for worship merely the deified attri- 
butes of their god, and consecrated objects whose sanctity they knew 
to be merely derived: and in the degradation of the popular mind, he 
witnessed the effects of this mistaken and presumptuous reservation. 
As the images crossed him in his solitude of the religious feasts of the 
Egyptians, the gross brute worship into which they had sunk, and the 
foul superstitions in which they groveled, he conceived the brave pur- 
pose — the boldest enterprise, I believe, on record — of admitting every 
one of Jehovah's people to the fullest possible knowledge of him, and 
to direct allegiance to him. Holding himself the knowledge of the 
Supreme Jehovah, he aspired, on behalf of his people, that they should 
have no other gods before Him. In Egypt, he had seen the only theory 
of government of which perhaps he had conceived, — that of a theo- 
cracy, — corrupted in its workings by such a concealment of the Pro- 
vidential ruler as caused the people to rest their homage and obedience 
on the vicegerent, and become wholly insensible to that divine origin 
of their moral and material government which was acknowledged by 
the priests. The class who monopolized wisdom and knowledge 
recognized in the priestly brother whom they made king the favored 
son and chosen agent of a divine ruler; but the people regarded their 
king as the ultimate ruling power. The bold purpose of Moses was 
to remove the medium, and to bring his brethren face to face with 
Jehovah as people and King. 

When these purposes had grown out of his aspirations, the details 
of the enterprise grew from perception into purpose too. The He- 
brews could never become enlightened amidst the darkness of popular 
life in Egypt. There could not be spiritual light in their houses, while 
" darkness that might be felt" brooded all about them. They could 
never be purified while the corruptions of idolatry swarmed within 
19 



290 



EASTERN LIFE. 



their dwellings, and among their dress and food, — coming up from the 
river, and down upon them in the very air. They could never be 
elevated in views and character while subject to contempt as " an un- 
clean people" (as Manetho calls them), and to the wrongs of slavery. 
— They must be removed. 

They must be removed: — but how and whither? They were 
cowardly, selfish, incapable of concert and of fidelity to a leader's pur- 
pose, — as the bulk of a body of slaves must ever be. Rising in revolt 
was out of the question. A stealthy flight was equally impossible. 
They must come out in a body, and openly, and under the sanction of 
the government. And the superstition, — and yet more, the fears, of the 
governing power must be wrought upon, till the sanction was given. 

But then, where were they to go ? The countries from which their 
fathers had come were occupied by people as warlike as the Egyptians, 
and as superstitious. The sunken Hebrews could neither possess them- 
selves of these countries, nor be safer from idolatry than in Egypt. 
They must be led into some empty place where, without disturbance, 
they might learn to live. They must be led into the Desert. No one 
knew better than Moses at this time, the privileges of life in the Desert. 
He had witnessed the hardihood, the self-denial, the trusting poverty, 
generous hospitality, and the comparatively pure piety of the Arab 
tribes who lived in tents in Nature's ascetic retreats. These were the 
/ very qualities the Hebrews needed, and could never attain elsewhere. 
It was not civilization and its lessons that they needed. Civilization 
and slavery were indissolubly connected in their ideas. Discipline 
was what they needed; and not that discipline from the hand of man 
which must include more or less of slavery ; but the discipline of Na- 
ture, whose service is perfect freedom. Here, while relaxing from the 
excessive toil which had broken them down, they were in no danger 
from indulgence. Here, while learning endurance, it would not be at 
the cost of that exasperation of feelings which had hitherto embittered 
their hardships. They would learn that submission to Nature which 
Us as great a virtue as submission to Man is a vice. Here, among the 
free winds, and bold suns, and broad shadows, with liberty to rove, 
and exemption from the very presence of Man, they might become 
J braced in soul, free in mind, and disciplined in body, till they should 
; become fit for an ulterior destination. — No doubt, Moses reverted with 
reverence to that prominent subject of Hebrew pride, — the greatness of 
his forefathers ; and his hope for his brethren took the form of raising 
them into a state worthy of their origin. He thought of their father 
Abraham, pious, powerful, and rich in the wealth of the Desert : and 
he looked forward to the time when these sunken children of Abraham 
might so awe the whole region as to sit down where they pleased be- 
side the springs, and rove among the boundless wastes, and pitch their 
tents anywhere under the starry sky, and then worship Jehovah before 
the door. As dwellers in tents had their great forefathers been strong 
and faithful to Jehovah ; and by a life in tents must his brethren regain 
the hardihood and simple piety which their race had lost. 

While Moses was thus leading Jethro's flocks in the Desert, and 



MOSES BEFORE THE EXODUS. 



291 



pondering the leading of that greater flock of which he was to be the 
Shepherd, the King of Egypt died; — that king who had adopted him 
as his grandson, and afterwards threatened his life on account of his 
homicide of the Egyptian whom he saw tyrannizing over a Hebrew. 
It was early in the reign of his successor that Moses moved towards 
Egypt again ; for the Exodus appears to have taken place in the fourth 
year of this Pharaoh, — Thothmes III. 

This was his second journey over the peninsula of Sinai. When 
his purposes were fixed and clear, he led back his flocks, and his family 
and servants, to Midian, and bade farewell to Jethro, — whom he met, 
the next time, under remarkable circumstances. He took his family 
with him ; but they turned back to Midian, and left him to proceed 
alone. — With what a new heart must he now have crossed these wilds ! 
Before, he was without a hope for his people or a purpose for himself, 
and those two hundred and fifty miles of rock and sand must have been 
a desert indeed ! Now, his new hopes and purposes, springing up 
wherever he turned his eyes in this future scene of his enterprise, must 
have made the wilderness blossom as the rose. — He did not enter 
Egypt alone ; for his elder brother met him. After consultation, they 
went together to the Hebrew district, Goshen, where their next busi- 
ness was to communicate their enterprise to the elders, — the heads of 
families who, as a remaining patriarchal custom, held such rule as now 
existed among the degraded people. 

The third entrance of Moses upon the Desert is that which usually 
interests travelers most, — not only from its importance, but because 
modern travel follows its track. All the three were, as regarded Moses 
himself, equally interesting to me ; for I cared little for being certainly 
on his very track, while the scene was, in all its grand features, that 
in which he lived. But here, in this third transit, there was the great 
new interest of sympathy with the people whom he led. What this 
interest and sympathy may grow to is perhaps inconceivable to those 
at home who have only the vague and dim idea of the Desert that I 
had before t lived in it. 

As every body knows, learned men difi'er about the road the Israelites 
took in leaving their Egyptian abodes. No one knows exactly where 
Goshen was, or where the fugitives crossed the Red Sea. It is not 
necessary to go over the arguments here, as I have no wish to prove 
that in the first instance we followed the Hebrew track. Most of our 
party, I believe, were convinced that we did ; and among those so con- 
vinced were the clergymen. I do not see that suflicient evidence 
exists to give even a preponderance of probability, and I have there- 
fore no opinion on the subject. When once on the other side of the 
Gulf of Seuz, the route is, for the most part, clear enough. The doubt 
is between two routes from the Nile to the Red Sea; — that by which 
travelers now go straight from Cairo to Suez, and the more southerly 
one called Wadee-el-Tiheh, — the Valley of the Wandering. This 
name shows which way tradition points out. 

If the reader thinks it worth while here to look at a map, he will 
see that a valley runs, first south-east and then east, from the Nile, a 



292 



EASTERN LIFE. 



little below Cairo, to the Red Sea, issuing at the bold promontory, Ras 
Attaka. Dr. Kitto and other learned speculators on the question, dis- 
trust the tradition which has named this the Valley of the Wandering, 
and believe that it is the way by which Pharoah hoped to drive the 
Hebrews back to the Nile. On this supposition, the Egyptian host 
followed the Hebrews to the head of the gulf, and then southwards 
down its western shore, till the great headland, Ras Attaka, stopped 
their march, and there seemed nothing for them to do but to return to 
Goshen by the Wadee-el-Tiheh, which opened to their right hand. 

However this may be, it was by the Wadee-el-Tiheh that we quitted 
the Nile, having the Djebel Attaka on our left hand, and a lower range 
of hills on the right. The two routes are about equally good for tra- 
veling purposes; and very good was the one we went by; hard gravel 
for the most part, or a firm pebbly ground, over which our attendants 
walked with as much ease as our camels. — And how many scores of 
miles did I walk in the desert, during those five weeks ! I found, as 
some others did, the motion of my camel more and more fatiguing and 
disagreeable, all the way ; and, being at home a great walker, I had re- 
course, more and more, to my own feet, — litde heeding even the heat 
and thirst in comparison with the annoyances of camel-riding. I have 
often walked from ten to fifteen miles in the noon hours, continuously, 
and of course at the pace of the caravan, — sometimes over an easy 
pebbly track, — sometimes over mountain passes, — sometimes cutting 
my boots to pieces on the sharp rocks ; but always giving up when we 
came to deep sand. Walking in deep sand in the Arabian Desert, at 
noonday, is a true purgatory : but there is little deep sand. We did 
not believe that more than one-fifth of our Desert route was sandy. 

As for the camel-riding, — I could not have conceived of any exercise 
being so utterly exhausting. The swaying motion, causing an unin- 
termitting pull upon one part of the spine, which can by no means be 
exchanged for another, becomes at last perfectly intolerable, though 
easy and agreeable enough at the outset. — I would never say a word 
to encourage any woman to travel in the Desert, if she must do it on 
the back of a camel. If she can walk as I do, well and good ; and I 
am told it is easy and agreeable to go on a donkey from Cairo to 
Jerusalem by the El Arish route. The footing is good enough for 
asses and horses in the Arabian Desert, — as the beautiful riding of the 
sheikhs may prove : — it is the want of water that is the difficulty. A 
woman who can walk far and easily, and bear the thirst which is the 
chief drawback on walking in the desert, may set out for Mount Sinai 
without fear. I was so far from being injured by my Desert traveling, 
that I improved in health from week to week, after having been very 
unwell in Egypt. There is nothing to fear for a traveler who can 
walk: but a woman who has no alternative, and must ride her camel 
all the way, should consider well before she undertakes the journey.- — 
As for all palankeens, panniers, chairs and boxes, — they are wholly in- 
sufferable, adding to the evil of the camel-pace, which cannot be got 
rid of, pains and penalties of their own. 

Walking in the Arabian Desert is made more easy than in any por- 



DESERT TRAVEL. 



293 



tion of desert I saw up the Nile, by the tracks, which are very con- 
spicuous and rarely intermit. During our whole journey from Cairo 
to Mount Sinai, I saw only three or four places where I should have 
had any doubt of the road, if I had been alone. The tracks are sim- 
ply discolorations of the dark pebbly ground or rocky platforms in 
some places, and a hardening of the sand in others. Sometimes 
scores of these tracks run parallel, winding away before and behind, 
and dying out of sight on either hand, so as greatly to moderate the 
sense of retreat and solitude in the desert. 

I have mentioned, in the camel riding, the only drawback I remem- 
ber on the pleasure of Desert traveling. It is a large item in the ac- 
count: but my impression of all the rest is now as of one long delight. 



CHAPTER II. 

DESERT TRAVEL.— THE RED SEA.— SUEZ.— LANDING IN ARABIA.— 
WELLS OF MOSES. 

On the morning of Wednesday, February 24th, our camp was early 
astir. From this time, we found there was a competition among the 
dragomen of the different parties which should get their employers up 
and to breakfast first. Our party was usually the earliest. After our 
breakfast under the fading stars, we set off, and saw, as we looked 
behind us, the whole train winding on, between us and the brightening 
Pyramids and palms. We took our farewell view of the Nile Valley 
about eleven o'clock, when the last fragments of the purple line of 
vegetation disappeared behind the sand hills. From this day forward 
I obtained the management of my camel rein, which my driver was un- 
willing to give up. It was a single rein of woven goat's hair, heavy, 
but manageable. The headgear of my camel was adorned with cow- 
ries. The creature was very sensitive, and the merest touch of the 
rein was enough to signify my pleasure. This was the easiest paced 
camel I rode ; but I was induced to give it up, after a day or two, on 
account of its shying whenever I put up my umbrella, or opened map 
or book ; and I saw it once run away at such a rate as to reconcile me 
to having exchanged it for another. Our pace was very slow ; — on an 
average, and including stoppages, not exceeding two and a half or three 
miles an hour. It was not permitted to any one to lose sight of the 
caravan ; and the most heavily laden beasts of course determined the 
pace of all the rest. The slowest trot, or amble, was the most agree- 
able pace : and we enjoyed the relief of this daily after luncheon, when 
the baggage camels had gone forwards ; and I contrived it often at other 
times — either by lingering till the train was nearly out of sight, and 
then overtaking it, or by pushing on where the tracks were clear, and 
I could not lose my way. 

In the course of this first morning, we were allowed to dismount, to 
climb a sandy eminence called Moses' Seat, where, according to tradi- 



294 



EASTERN LIFE. 



tion, [Moses took his station, to collect and review his multitude. The 
interest of the scene lay in its extreme wildness and desolation. Only 
three European parties had ever passed this way before us : and the 
novelty did, we believe, attract the attention of the roving Arabs who 
saw us, though they took good care that we should not see them. One 
dark head was this day observed peeping over the ridge of a sandhill ; 
and the fluttering of garments showed that the spy had taken flight to 
his hidden comrades. This man was the only person we saw between 
Bissateen and Suez, except one group of Bishara's friends. There 
was a popping of guns one evening after dark, on account, we were 
told, of Bedoueens seen prowling about the camp : but whether this 
was true we do not know. 

Our escort were all of Bishara's tribe; and some had faces as pre- 
possessing as Bishara's own. They were all armed — with pistols, or 
match-locks, or short swords. A number of spears, stuck points up- 
wards on camels" backs, glittered in the sun. Some of the Arabs wore 
sandals of fish skin ; some were clothed in sheepskins, the woolly side 
inwards. All had their heads thickly covered, and where possible, 
with something white, at least in the middle of the day. For the most 
part, they trudged during the eight or nine hours of our daily travel ; 
but sometimes they rode in turn. 

We were surprised at the variety of the scenery, this first day ; but 
we were not long in learning that there is endless variety in Desert 
traveling. To-day we saw wide valleys of hard gravel, narrow defiles, 
water-courses tufted with low tamarisks and dwarf thorny acacia, traces 
of pools left by former torrents, yellow slopes and mounds, dark and 
abrupt hills, and limestone eminences, embrowned with the soil, some- 
times lofty enough to be called, in Egypt, mountains. The Djebel 
Ehaiboon 1s a black hill rising from amidst white sands ; and I was 
struck by the streaky character of some of the soil, on emerging from 
the White Valley upon the Wadee Beda — resembling cloud-shadows 
so exactly that it surprised me to see that there was not a cloud in the 
sky. The White Valley is a fine winding defile, overhung by steep 
and imposing hills ; — the very place for an assault from the Bedoueens, 
if our troop had been less strong. 

We stopped this afternoon in the midst of undulating pebbly ground, 
where our tents were fixed, to our great satisfaction, further apart than 
at Bissateen, allowing us more liberty and dom.estic convenience than 
when we were all so huddled together that conversation was overheard 
from tent to tent, and we could not stir out without stumbling over tent 
ropes. Of all the variety of ground on which we encamped during 
these weeks, we liked the pebbly soil the best. Hard sand was con- 
venient ; but there black beetles abound. Soft sand has usually large 
stones strewn upon it, under which scorpions and other reptiles hide. 
Of course, rock will not do, as the tent pegs cannot be driven in. Short 
grass, on which we often encamped in Palestine, is pleasant: but then 
there are earwigs and ants. The prettiest perhaps was at Petra, where 
lilies were growing under my bed : but, on the whole, there is nothing 
like smooth pebbles — our floor on this first night. On the Thursday, 



DESERT TRAVEL. 295 

we encamped in the midst of a very wide valley, or plain, where hills 
rose in the east, purple in the sunset. From a distant rising ground, 
the encampment looked beautiful — the green and white tents, and the 
camels lying round them, diminished almost to dots, and the smoke 
from the fires of the Arabs rising like blue waving threads. One of 
the clergymen made an admirable colored sketch of this, which con- 
veyed, to my eye, a better idea of the vast expanse of a Desert valley, 
and the smallness of a large encampment, than any illustration I ever 
met with in books. The coloring would not be believed in England ; 
but it was very true. On the Friday, when the evening was coming 
on, our Sheikh showed us what Arab running is. He ran before us 
for some miles, crossing occasionally from side to side, on the look 
out for some pool or well which he expected to find. His running 
appeared like a rather lazy trot till his diminishing figure proved to us 
how fast he got over the ground. He seemed to lose no breath, and 
feel no fatigue ; and when we came near enough for nods and signs, 
his bright genial face was all smiles and cheerfulness. He found the 
pool at last ; but a party of Arabs were clustered about it. They were 
friends of his, and they kissed very heartily. Some of our escort drank 
a little of the water ; but it looked like muddy milk, and was nearly 
exhausted by the first comers ; so that we all preferred what was in 
our water skins. 

It may be as well to give here the order of our day, — of an average 
day, — for the amusement of those who may wish to know what life in 
the Desert is like. 

We four carried with us two tents, and two servants besides our 
escort. In the larger tent we dined and spent the evening; and there 
Mrs. Y. and I slept. In the smaller tent, the gentlemen slept and 
wrote their journals. Our servants were Alee, the dragoman, and 
Abasis the cook, — a young man from Cairo, who served us faithfully, 
and satisfied us in every respect. He spoke little English, but under- 
stood us sufficiently. His English speech amused us very much. 
He made "Very well" go almost as far as our "Bono" and " Non 
bono" in Egypt. These two words seemed all that he could command 
under the emotions of parting, when the time at last came for saying 
farewell. 

" Now, Abasis, we must say good-by." 
" Very well." 

" I shall not forget you, Abasis. I shall tell my friends of you, if 
they come to Egypt, that you may serve them as well as you have 
served us." 

" Very well." 

" You will not forget us, Abasis." 
" Very well, — no." 

" Here is a little present for you. If you like this handkerchief for 
a turban, you will wear it, and remember me." 
" Very well." 

And all this time, his heart was full, while his words were so cool. 
He carried under his charge what was called the Cook's tent, — a small 



296 



EASTERN LIFE. 



affair, under which he stowed his apparatus, and where he and Alee 
slept. His cooking was, of course, done in the open air, on a trivet, 
which held three pans for burning charcoal, over which he put his 
saucepans and baking-plate, and where he toasted our bread. He had 
charge of the stores ; — the water-skins, flour, biscuit, macaroni, cheese, 
condiments, butter, eggs, oranges and preserved fruits; and the wine 
and ale. It was his business to buy, keep and kill the fowls and sheep. 
He worked harder than any one else of the party; and I wondered that 
he held out so well. He had to be up to cook our hot breakfast by 
five o'clock, — giving us always fowl or hashed mutton, eggs and toast. 
He had then to pack up his stores and apparatus, and help in striking 
the tents. His fatigue of mere traveling was, of course, the same as 
ours ; and when we stopped, he worked as hard as any one at the severe 
labor of pitching the three tents, before cooking our dinner, which was 
always ready within two hours of our dismounting. He furnished the 
boiling water and toast at tea; by which time, he must often have been 
half dead. Yet I never saw his face otherwise than earnest and wide 
awake ; — never knew him flag. It was really a pleasure to me, when 
I went out under the stars in the evening, to see him and Alee seated 
at their ease with their chibouques : but I believe they had seldom many 
minutes together of such rest. 

At four o'clock in the morning, or earlier, Alee brought a light into 
our tent. Our tin basins had been filled the night before, and a pitcher 
of water and tin cups placed on the table. I always slept in what is 
called Levinge's bag, — an inexpressible comfort. Without it, I believe 
I should scarcely have slept at all ; but, as it was, I lay down every 
night, absolutely secure from insects of every kind. The flies might 
hang in clusters, like bees, on the tent pole: the beetles might run 
over the floor, and the earwigs hide themselves under the counterpane, 
and fleas skip among the camel furniture ; in my bag, — under its wide 
airy canopy, I was safe from them all, and from all fancies about 
them. It did not take me above five minutes in the day to put up and 
take down my canopy ; — a small price to pay for comfort and good 
sleep. — As soon as we opened our tent door, while I was taking down 
my bag, and the gimlets which, screwed into the tent poles, served 
us for pegs to hang our things on. Alee carried out our table and its 
tressles and the camp-stools, and Abasis laid the cloth for our open-air 
breakfast. We sat down to it at five or soon after, when the stars were 
growing pale, and the translucent daM'n began to shine behind the 
eastern ridges, or perhaps to disclose the sheeny sea. — While we were 
at our meal, we saw one after another of the other four parties come 
forth from their tents, and sit down to table; — the two bachelor com- 
panions being always the last. They were generally sitting down just 
when I was walking ofl' in advance, with my courbash (hide whip) and 
bag, — containing map, book, note-book, goggles and fan. By this time, 
the tents were down, in due succession ; the camels were groaning and 
snarling, and the Arabs loading them, — with an occasional quarrel and 
fight, for variety. — Having learned from Alee or the Sheikh which way 
I was to go, I wandered forth ; and many a glorious view I had of 



DESERT TRAVEL. 



297 



the sunshine breakmg in among the mountain fissures, while the busy 
and noisy camp yet lay in deep shadow below. One by one, the 
company would mount and follow, or Mr. W. with his book, and Mr. 
E. with his chibouque, would set forth on foot. In a line, or in pairs 
or groups, the camels, with their riders, would step out slowly; and 
then the two lively young ladies, Miss K. and Miss C, would rouse 
theirs to a fast trot, and pass us all by. — When the sunshine reached 
me, or I had walked enough for the present, I put on my goggles, pulled 
my broad-brimmed hat over my eyes, and signed to my watchful camel 
driver. Then, down went the beast on its knees, and my driver set 
his foot on its neck while I sprang on, and settled myself with my stir- 
rup and between my cushions, and stowed my comforts about me. 
When I had firm hold of the peg before and the peg behind, the crea- 
ture was allowed to rise, and I sustained its three jerks, — two forward 
and one backward, — as well as I could. 

At eleven o'clock, Abasis rode up with his tin lunch-box, to supply 
each of us with bread, cold fowl, or a hard egg, and a precious orange. 
Or, as oftener happened, we looked out at that time for some shadow 
from a chance shrub, or in a rocky nook, where we might sit down 
to luncheon, while the baggage camels went forwards. That we might 
not be too far separated, we were not at first allowed more than twenty 
minutes for this rest. — It was a pretty sight, — the scattering about of 
the company among the patches and nooks of shade. 

After three o'clock, the sheikh and dragomen began to look about, to 
choose our abiding place for the night. Where the sheikh points, or 
stands, or plants his spear, there it is to be. Then, as the camels ar- 
rive, they kneel down, and release their riders. This was the time of 
day when I found the heat the most oppressive ; — in the half hour be- 
tween arriving and taking possession of the tent. Within the tent, too, 
it was often scarcely endurable till after dinner, though we looped up 
the sides, to obtain what air could be had. While the tent was pre- 
paring, I generally tried to sleep for a few minutes, on the sand or some 
neighboring rock. — It required about half an hour to put up and fur- 
nish our tent. It was hard work to rear it, fix the poles, and drive in 
the pegs. Then Alee turned over every large stone within it, to dis- 
lodge scorpions, or other such enemies. This done, and the floor a 
little smoothed, he brought in the iron bedsteads and bedding, and the 
saddle-bags which held our clothes. Next came the mats ; — two pretty 
mats, brought from Nubia, which covered the greater part of the floor. 
Then the table was placed in the middle, and four camp stools were 
brought ; and basins of water, and a pitcher and cup. Mrs. Y. and I 
might now dress and refresh ourselves, while Alee and Abasis put up 
the other two tents. 

Mr. E. was to be envied at this time of day. He was in no hurry 
for his tent, for he was engrossed with his journal. He would secure 
a campstool, and lay his hand on his inkglass, and write as fast as pos- 
sible till all was ready for him to dress ; and then again perhaps till 
dinner. I could not do this. I was very well satisfied with myself if 
I wrote my journal after dressing and chibouque, and before dinner. I 



298 



EASTERN LIFE. 



did it oftener between dinner and tea ; and twice I let two or three 
days pass before I brought it up. One's journal is the chief nuisance 
in such travel as ours. There is no pleasure in it, one way or ano- 
ther. About one's duties at home there is always some pleasure, be- 
cause one can do well what one undertakes: but one's journal is a 
perpetual irritation and mortification. It is such a mockery ! When 
one's whole soul has been full and glowing for hours among marvelous 
scenes and new experiences, the only result in one's journal is a couple 
of pages of record ^vhich one wants to tear out as soon as written, in 
indignation at its poverty. But the deepest mortification of this kind 
is better than not keeping a journal. Anything is better than the shame 
and sorrow which must sooner or later ensue, when one finds the ima- 
gery of one's journey becoming hazy in the memory, and incidents 
and dates uncertain, and trains of thought no longer recoverable. It is 
worth any fatigue and annoyance at the moment, to secure certainty 
for all future time in regard to the knowledge obtained on the spot, and 
a complete array of pictures of the scenery one has passed through. — 
On the Nile, it was easy to keep a full journal, and not wholly disa- 
greeable. In the Desert, it required strong resolution ; and I fear I 
should not have done it if I had not felt that the thoughts of this jour- 
ney w'ould be embittered to me forever if I let it pass as a dream which 
must fade. It was purely for the peace of my own mind that I held 
myself to this irksome duty; for I had then no intention whatever of 
writing this book. Now I am, as I need not say, heartily thankful to 
be in possession of the mass of papers lying before me, in virtue of 
which the scenes and suggestions of my Eastern travel are securely 
mine forever. — I say this in the hope that my testimony may strengthen 
some young future traveler against the indolence or humiliation which 
might interfere with his keeping a journal. He may be assured that 
however meager his records and descriptions, he will be thankful for 
them hereafter; and that no present fatigue can be so painful as his 
future regrets if he entrusts to his memory what it will certainly let 
slip or spoil. — After all, there was some satisfaction in my journal, — ■ 
at times when I had brought it up to the present moment, and when, 
as I was w^iping my pen, a breath of air stole through the tent, pro- 
mising a refreshing evening, and Alee appeared with the soup tureen, 
and the gentlemen came in, cheerful and hungry, and the bottle of ale 
(the greatest possible refreshment in the desert, except the chibouque) 
was visible in the corner. The thought of the finished journal cer- 
tainly gave a zest to the dinner, — a relish which the two gentlemen 
must have daily enjoyed, for they were daily diligent. 

Abasis gave us excellent dinners — good soup always: mutton and 
fowls always ; and these Arab cooks discover an astonishing variety of 
ways of cooking mutton. Then, there was macaroni, and potatoes ; and 
always some nice pudding or fruit pie: excellent cheese; and a des- 
sert of oranges and capital figs. Then the chibouques were brought, — 
at once the indispensable comfort and chief luxury of Eastern life: — 
a comfort of whose importance there no more conception can be formed 
at home than the people of the Guinea coast can appreciate our win- 



THE RED SEA. 



299 



ter-clothing and fires. Then I usually went out, to survey the camp 
and scenery, and try to get rid of, or better endure, the sense of irrita- 
tion from fatigue and heat which was at this hour the hardest to bear. 
By this time, the impression of that suffering is much weakened, while 
the images of the Arab fires, the dim tents and dark camels, the tower- 
ing mountains fitfully lighted by the moon, or the dim plain, all cano- 
pied over by the lustrous heavens, or the quiet murmuring sea, flowing 
to my feet, are as fresh and delicious as ever. How often have I 
stolen round the camp, just beyond the tent ropes, enjoying the sight 
of the camel drivers before their fires, or the guard grouped about a 
lively story-teller ! How often have I wandered away among the clefts 
of the rocks, or so far along the beach as that I might sing unheard all 
the beloved old music which I never utter at-home, in our little island 
where one can never get out of earshot !-— Sooner or later, however, 
Alee was seen going to our tent with the boiling kettle, and I was to 
be refreshed by tea. After tea, we were all more awake and lively, — ■ 
just enough so to relish a rubber, though nothing else. A rubber kept 
us amused and merry till ten o'clock; and I hardly think anything 
else would have done it. We cared litde about it; but it was better 
than vainly trying to read, and being too sleepy to speak civilly.— At 
ten o'clock, the gentlemen went to their tent; Alee brought the water- 
basins, and fastened down the tent curtain ; and I put up my canopy, 
and made my bed, and was presently asleep. — Such was the ordinary 
course of our days in the Desert. 

On the Saturday morning, our fourth day from Bissateen, I saw the 
Hed Sea. At the moment when its distant gleam caught my eye. Miss 
C, who was at the head of the troop, turned and waved her hand, and 
there was an immediate press forward. The tracks turned northwards, 
and we were presently upon the beach. One and all dismounted, and 
snatched at the glorious shells which lay in heaps and banks along the 
shore. All pockets and bags were filled, and we were all presenting 
one another with the most exquisite shells we could find where all were 
beautiful. We were like a party of children ; and like children, we 
were unaware of our folly. These shells were all dead, and must soon 
crumble into lime-dust. Nothing in our journey gave me a more dis- 
tinct impression of our distance from home than this rapturous arrival 
on the shores of the Red Sea. Yet there were some serious thoughts 
connected with the spot. We were now at that point where many 
scholars believe that the Egyptian host overtook the Hebrews. All 
progress to the south was barred by the high promontory of Ataka, 
which juts into the sea; and if the Egyptians came from the north, the 
only escape for the Hebrews was by the way we had come, leading 
back only to the Nile. The sea was blue and clear beyond descrip- 
tion. Northwards, a narrow strip of shore lay between the sea and 
the brown, precipitous rocky mountains of the Egyptian coast. To 
the north-east, with the blue gulf between, lay the white line of Suez ; 
and the Indian steamer was discernible, moored a few miles below. 
The Arabian hills, soft in their amethyst hues, shut in the whole to the 
east. It was an exquisite scene. 



300 



EASTERN LIFE. 



We proceeded northwards, and encamped on a charming spot — on 
the hard sand below the mountains. The clear waters rippled up among 
the shelves of rock so as to tempt us irresistibly to bathe, though we 
were warned of the danger of sharks. Mrs. Y. and I could not believe 
that sharks would come into the shallows of the very shore: and we 
bathed accordingly ; as I believe every one else did before the day was 
over; but we were told at Suez, the next morning, that the inhabitants 
never bathe, and that it is only rash strangers, ignorant of the ways of 
sharks, that venture to do so. On me, however, the warning was 
thrown away. I bathed whenever I could, in both gulfs ; and we heard 
no more of sharks. 

On Sunday, February 28th, we were to reach Suez in time for morn- 
ing service: and, as the town was within sight, our own party pushed 
on before the others. It was starlight when I came out of the tent; 
and while we were at breakfast, the dawn disclosed the sheeny sea and 
the fissures of the gloomy mountains. We entered the gate of Suez 
between nine and ten o'clock, and were met by the agent of the Penin- 
sular and Oriental Company, of which Mr. E. is a Director. Captain 
Linguist, the agent, showed us all possible kindness, and rendered us 
every service he could think of. Among other things, he compelled us 
to accept his whole collection of shells, which he forwarded to Liverpool 
for us. To him it was, as he told us, a truly happy day. His ordi- 
nary intercourse with Europeans is necessarily very hasty and unsatis- 
factory. His office is to help the transit of India passengers ; and they 
are always in a vast hurry, and anxious about their luggage. The talk 
with them is about carpet-bags, omnibuses and steamers. Till to-day 
he had not for many a month joined in worship, or heard a psalm, or 
sat down with his countrymen to quiet conversation, or taken them a 
leisurely walk. He will remember that Sunday, as I am sure we shall 
his kindness. 

After a comfortable second breakfast at the hotel, which is kept by 
two Englishwomen, we went to an eminence near, where Captain Lin- 
guist pointed out to us the well whence only Suez obtains fresh water, 
and the first Station in the Desert; and, to the north, the end of the 
Gulf ; — a stretch of two miles or so of shallow water. A few small 
vessels lay here, and along both shores to the southwards. Captain 
Linguist has followed out the traces of the ancient canal; and he can 
find no evidences that it was ever used, or even finished; and he be- 
lieves, therefore, that it can afl'ord no precedent for the proposed new 
one, even supposing the state of the waters and shore to be unaltered ; 
which nobody, I believe, does suppose. 

We wrote letters in the evening, being glad of this last opportunity, 
for several weeks, of forwarding news to England. 

The next morning, March 1st, Captain L. took us in his boat over 
to the Arabian side. The wind was so light that we proceeded at the 
rate of less than two miles an hour; and the rest of our company passed 
us, and landed two hours before us. The baggage and escort had 
crossed the night before. The view of Suez from the water was finer 
than I should have supposed possible for such a miserable place : but 



WELL OF MOSES ^JOURNEY TO SINAI. 



301 



such an atmosphere adorns everything with the highest charms of color. 
The light on the sides of the vessels, on the two minarets, and through 
the shallow-waters, was a feast. The coral-shoals below, red and dark, 
contrasted with the pale green above the sandy bottom. 

It was one o'clock when we landed; and the whole caravan, pro- 
visions and all, were gone on, without leaving word where we were to 
stop. Our camels and dragoman were awaiting us ; but neither food, 
cook nor guide. Captain Jiinguist was delighted to improvise a lun- 
cheon for us at his country-house, at the Wells of Moses. He showed 
us his garden, which is well irrigated, and as productive as a garden 
can be in such a place. He showed us the ancient wells, all shrouded 
in bushy palms ; and pointed out indications of moisture which en- 
courage him to search for a fourth well. Of the three which we saw, 
one is built up with massive and ancient masonry. We were glad that 
our kind entertainer had such a resource as even this place. When 
weary with the solitude and irksomeness of his position, he comes over 
here, and drives away blue devils with a gallop over the sand hills, and 
plans of improvement about his country-house. The luncheon he gave 
us was extraordinary enough in its place to deserve mention. Here, 
among these dreary sands of the Arabian shore, we had butter from 
Ireland, ale from England, wine from Spain, ham from Germany, 
bread and mutton from Cairo and Suez, cheese from Holland, and 
water from Madras ! Truly, the dwellers on the Red Sea may well be 
advocates of free trade. — At half-past five p.m. Captain L. helped us 
to mount, and saw us on our way. 



CHAPTER HI. 

JOURNEY TO SINAI. 

The heat was still excessive, and we were faint and fatigued at this 
evening hour, when we should have been sitting down to rest; and our 
whole day's ride was still before us ; — a ride of twenty miles, as it 
turned out. Yet I look back with singular pleasure to that first Ara- 
bian ride. We might go as fast as we liked, being free from the bag- 
gage camels ; and we were to ride as quietly as we could. So I put 
my camel to a trot, and pushed on, to see what I could see in Arabia. 
I looked out for Bedoueens on the hills; and many times I thought I 
saw them : but it always turned out to be a round stone instead of a 
man's head, or some fitful shadow on the slopes, instead of a crouch- 
ing Arab. In only one instance do I believe now that I saw a spy 
watching from behind a ridge. The large, glorious sun presently went 
down clear behind the sands to our right; and just before, the full moon 
had come stealing up behind the eastern ridge, — at first a pale ghost, 
soon to brighten to a golden orb. Then I was struck by the sheen on 
the pebbly slopes, almost as bright as on water : and all the way I was 
perplexed by the altered proportions of every object in such a place 



302 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and light. When I looked back, it made me almost breathless to see 
our little party, — only four riders besides myself, moving in a space 
like that ; and yet every ridge and stone looked huge till we came up 
to it. Two camel drivers were running beside us. When we had 
been riding above two hours, one of them began to scream horribly, 
and utter shrill calls ; and from under the next shadowy slope an Arab 
sprang out, close to me as I rode ahead. It was only one of our escort, 
who had been left behind by the Sheikh to look for us. He told Alee 
that we had yet some way to go ; and a long way, indeed, it seemed. 
We told one another when it was eight o'clock, and when it was nine, 
and still we trotted on, seeing nothing through the uncertain and per- 
plexing light but the same wilds of rock and sand. At last, as I was 
gazing forwards intently, I saw a litde flash, apparently on the very 
horizon ; and then a report followed. The Sheikh had fired a gun for 
our guidance. We came to some tufts of tamarisk and other low shrubs 
in a water-course ; and amidst these were the tents. Our over-dressed 
dinner was on table immediately, — that is, soon after ten o'clock ; but 
Mrs. Y. and I craved tea, which presently revived us. — We now found 
that we had been the least distressed of the whole European party. 
Our comrades had found, on landing, that the Arab company had gone 
on: they had no kind friend at the Wells of Moses to give them lun- 
cheon : they had traveled the whole day without food, and were two 
hours and a half longer on the road than we. 

The next morning we first encountered a high wind in the desert. 
The sand met us in streams. As riding under such a powdering was 
more disagreeable than walking, when one could occasionally turn one's 
back to the wind, and take breath, I walked about eight miles; and by 
that time, the wind had moderated a little. — As I was afterwards riding 
ahead, I saw a palm among some sand hills ; and my camel quickened 
its pace, and needed no persuasion to carry me up to the tree. More 
shrubby palms were now seen growing about a chink in the hill-side, 
where a little pool of water appeared. It was rather bitter, but drink- 
able. Our camels soon reduced it to sandy dregs. They thrust their 
heads together eagerly, and pushed hard for a drink; but I observed 
that each drank very little. From its bitterness, this well is called by 
some people the Marah of Scripture: but it is not generally supposed 
to be the actual place. — On referring to Burckhardt, I find, however, 
that he believes this to be the Marah of Exodus xv. 23. He says : — 
" We passed the well of Howara, round which a few date trees grow. 
Niebuhr traveled the same route, but his guides probably did not lead 
him to this well, which lies among hills, about two hundred paces out 

of the road The water of the well of Howara is so bitter that 

men cannot drink it; and even camels, if not very thirsty, refuse to 
taste it." — It was probably diluted by the rains, (which here fall and 
flow very copiously,) when we tasted the water. We were nearly two 
months earlier in the season than Burckhardt; and we saw every- 
where traces of recent floods in the water-courses. Burckhardt con- 
tinues : — 

" From Ayoun Mousa to the well of Howara we had traveled fifteen 



JOURNEY TO SINAI. 



303 



hours and a quarter. Referring to this distance, it appears probable 
that this is the desert of three days mentioned in the Scriptures to have 
been crossed by the Israelites immediately after their passing the Red 
Sea, and at the end of which they arrived at Marah. In moving with 
a whole nation, the march may well be supposed to have occupied 
three days ; and the bitter well at Marah, which was sweetened by 
Moses, corresponds exacdy with that of Howara. This is the usual 
route to Mount Sinai, and was probably, therefore, that which the 
Israelites took on their escape from Egypt." 

The next day, (Wednesday, March 3d,) I discovered how com- 
pletely I had been possessed with the spirit of the desert, by the sort 
of feeling with which I greeted a single tree. It was only a poor 
thorny-acacia, low and wide-spreading : but its importance to eye and 
mind cannot be judged of by those who have never seen a solitary tree 
— the only vegetation within a wide horizon. As I was riding ahead, 
I waved my courbash to those behind, lest anybody should miss the 
sight. But in a little while, there was much more to see. I came 
upon a clump of palms ; — those bushy palms of the desert which are 
to my eye so much more beautiful than the tall trimmed palms — 
trimmed for date-bearing — which we see in cultivated regions, and in 
all pictures of the East. In the midst of this clump was a well ; and 
along the deep water-course, for a considerable distance, tamarisks, 
acacias and palms were scattered and clumped. As several of the 
party dismounted here, I walked up the water-course, as far as I dared, 
till the sight of some strange Arabs, looking at me from behind the 
trees, turned me back. Soon after remounting, we came upon a string 
of muddy pools in the water-course, where our camels drank. Every- 
where in the desert, we were surprised by the number of water-courses, 
and the traces of torrents. We were almost hourly riding over or near 
that caked soil, curling up in large slices, which tells of a recent flood. 

Here, and in far drier parts of the desert, we saw dragon-flies in 
abundance ; — a sign, probably, of the rainy season being just over. It 
is curious that while no rain falls in the almost parallel and not distant 
Nile Valley, there should be abundant rains in this peninsular, usually 
in December and January. We saw a good many pigeons, and a few 
other birds ; and under almost every bush, were the holes of the litde 
jerboas. 

Our place of encampment this evening was very charming. In a 
nook made by mountains meeting at right angles, the vanished torrent 
seemed to have spread abroad, rather than to have turned a sharp cor- 
ner, while confined within banks. Still, this was in a valley ; only 
the valley widened a little at this turn. In this nook grew palms in 
clumps ; and there were little strips of grass bordering the tiny runnels 
in the sand ; and in the crevices of the precipitous rocks were tufts of 
weeds, of a really dazzling green. The scenery the next morning was 
transporting. I walked forwards for a few miles — past a prodigious 
black rock which rose in grand contrast with the brown mountains ; 
the sea, of the deepest blue, opening out at the end of the gorge, and 
bounded afar by the Egyptian hills, dressed in heavenly hues. We 



304 



EASTERN LIFE. 



came down upon the sea, and went in and out, between it and the 
mountains, many times. The rocks were the most diversified I ever 
saw. I noted them on the spot as being black, green, crimson, lilac, 
maroon, yellow, golden and white : and their form was that of a whole 
host of cones. Then we entered upon the wilderness of Sin, and the 
plain was stony towards the striking entrance of Wadee Shelal. We 
had now left Burckhardt's track. He took the more northerly route 
to Sinai, by Wadee Sheikh, but returned to Cairo by the one we were 
On. We went by the more southerly track, which gave us the ad- 
vantage of skirting Mount Serbal. 

Some time after lunching under a projecting rock, we undertook the 
great pass in Wadee Shelal. It was necessary to dismount — not so 
much on account of the steepness of the ascent, which was, in fact, a 
long zigzag staircase, as of its narrowness. A baggage-camel filled 
the space completely ; and if one of these should press against a ridden 
camel, the rider's limbs would probably be crushed against the rock. 
I led my camel up the pass ; and when I had crossed the ridge, ray 
position seemed strange enough : — alone, leading my camel in a hollow 
way, where the heat was like the mouth of a furnace, and where I 
should hardly have supposed myself on our own familiar earth, but for 
the birds which flew up in the sunshine, and the dragon-flies that flitted 
by. I now seemed to feel, for the first time, true pity for the wander- 
ing Hebrews. What a place was this for the Hebrew mothers with 
their sucking babes ! They who had lived on the banks of the never- 
failing Nile, and drunk their fill of its sweet waters, must have been 
aghast at the aspect of a scene like this, where the eye, wandering as 
it will, can see nothing but bright and solemn rocks and a sky without 
a cloud. As I thought of their fevered children imploring water, and 
their own failing limbs where there was no shade in which to rest, I 
could imagine the agony of the Hebrew fathers, and well excuse their 
despairing cry, " Give us water that we may drink ! Wherefore is 
this that thou hast brought us up out of the land of Egypt, to kill us 
and our children and our cattle with thirst? . . . Wherefore have 
ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us unto this evil place ? It 
is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates : neither 
is there any water to drink." They were here in the early days of 
their wandering, when the freshness of the Nile Valley was vivid in 
their remembrance ; and it was later in the year than when we tra- 
veled this way. To them, the sun was more scorching than to us ; 
and the caked' soil of the water-courses had become dry dust ; and, as 
Burckhardt found at a yet earlier season, the scanty foliage of the thorny- 
acacia was all so dead and crisped with the heat as to ignite with a 
spark. The faith of the meditative and instructed Moses must have 
been strong to bear him up in such a scene : and what must have been 
the clamor and despair of the slavish multitude, whose hope and cou- 
rage had been extinguished by that bondage which yet left their do- 
mestic aflfections in all their strength ! At every step, we found the 
Scriptural imagery rising up before our minds — the imagery of over- 
shadowing rocks, sheltering wings, water-brooks, and rain filling the 



JOURNEY TO SINAI. 



305 



pools : — even we, with all our comforts and our w^ell-filled water-skins, 
relieved our mental oppression with imagery like this. But the poor 
Hebrews had no Scriptures, no faith, no promises that they could yet 
receive. To them, it was all evil and no hope. Well might Moses 
himself here sink below the level of his purposes, and cry " What 
shall I do unto this people ? they be almost ready to stone me." When 
my eye caught at the tufts of grass peeping from under the stones, and 
a green bush here and there in the ravines, I remembered that they 
would be gone before the summer, and that there were none when the 
Hebrews passed by. 

It was at the end of one of these parched wadees that we encamped 
that night, — encompassed with precipitous rocks. The red granite 
mountains we were now in the midst of, are massive and awful beyond 
any other mountains I ever saw. The sunset lights, and the morrow's 
dawn dressed them in splendor, but scarcely relieved their gloom. — 
This had been a remarkable day ; but the morrow was yet more so. 

I was out at dawn on the morning of the 5th, and by sunrise I was 
walking forwards alone, watching the sun-floods which streamed down 
between the fantastic peaks of the mountains. Enormous blocks of red 
granite lay beside the tracks ; and from their crevices the birds flew up 
into the light. I had been warned not to walk far ; and I soon learned 
why. — Presently after mounting, I was surprised to see, on the left 
hand face of rock, two tablets smoothed for inscriptions. On one, the 
inscription had been eff'aced : the other was covered with Egyptian 
hieroglyphics. — Bishara came up, and pointed to a wadee before us 
which diverged from the main route, — Wadee Magara, — and here he 
evidently wanted us to go. We turned in there: and I will just men- 
tion, for the guidance of any future traveler, where the Egyptian relics 
are to be looked for. Passing into Wadee Magara from Wadee Gen- 
nee, a patch of green shrubs soon appears on the right; and further on, 
a single thorny-acacia is seen on the same side. Here the traveler 
must dismount, and climb the steep and difficult mountain side imme- 
diately opposite the tree. If he sets out in the angle, he can hardly 
miss his object. — On the left hand slope are two tablets of hierogly- 
phics, besides some attempts at excavation which have been discontin- 
ued. On the right hand slope of the recess are four more ; and further 
round on the same side, still two more, under the shelter of a projecting 
ledge : — one might say, in a little cave. Of these two, one is finished ; 
the other only just begun. What can these inscriptions mean, — high 
up such a wild, retired mountain, and unfinished? 

Niebuhr discovered, and after him Laborde and other travelers visited, 
a group of Egyptian mortuary stones (as is supposed) near Naszeb, on 
the more northern road which Burckhardt took; and an account of them 
is given by Laborde.* Of this group Burckhardt sayst — "It seems 
to be a custom prevalent with the Arabs in every part of the desert, to 
have regular burial-grounds, whither they carry their dead, sometimes 

* Journey through Arabia Petra?a, &c., p. 80 (English translation), 
t Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 482. 



20 



306 



EASTERN LIFE. 



from the distance of several days' journey. The burying-ground seen 
by Niebuhr near Naszeb, which, as I have already mentioned, I passed 
without visiting, .... appears to have been an ancient ceme- 
tery of the same kind, formed at a time when hieroglyphical characters 
were in use among all the nations under Egyptian influence. As there 
are no countries where ancient manners are so permanent as in the 
desert, it is probable that the same customs of sepulture then prevailed 
which still exist ; and that the burial-ground described by Niebuhr by 
no means proves the former existence of a city." 

I wish some one who can read the Egyptian hieroglyphics would go 
and examine into this matter. Laborde mentions tablets slightly, — the 
tablets which we saw, and supposes that some attempts to find copper 
may have been made here, which might attract Egyptian workmen. 
If such works were ever begun here, they must have been immediately 
relinquished. 

We retraced our steps to the entrance of the wadee, and then, turn- 
ing to the left, entered upon Wadee Mokatteb, — the Written Valley. 
I was so busy thinking over what we had just seen, that I forgot to ask 
the name of this new wadee, or to take heed to what was about me, 
when a rock turning off to the left caught my eye, and roused me at 
once. It was covered with inscriptions, from base to summit; — cover- 
ed as thick as the letters would stand; not only on the smooth parts of 
the stone, but wherever the characters could be put. I was the last of 
the troop; and they had certainly all passed by without noticing this 
rock. I shouted, and waved my courbash to bring them back; they 
turned, but did not come. They all drew to the side of the wadee; 
and I presently found that they too had discovered wonderful rocks. 
For six miles or so now, we passed between rocks inscribed all over 
with characters which nobody can read. — They are irregularly carved; 
— some larger, some smaller, from (I think) nearly a foot high to half 
an inch. Those of us who had good sight perceived that there were 
inscriptions much higher up than we had been given to understand by 
travelers. On many a smooth natural tablet, high up on the face of the 
mountain, could I see mysterious lines, like those below, when the 
sunlight or shadow fell favorably: but the unbroken mass of inscrip- 
tions was between the base and a height of twenty feet. — Almost every 
large stone which lay in the valley also bore similar records. Some 
were rather lighdy traced, — little more than scratched, — on the stone: 
but many were deep cut. 

This character was unknown at the time when Justinian built the 
Convent of Mount Sinai; and it cannot yet be read. At first, the dis- 
coverers had a natural hope that these gravings on the rock might 
prove to be the work of the Hebrews : but that idea has long been given 
up. From very early ages, the mountains we were now approaching 
had been sacred places and objects of pilgrimage ; and after the Chris- 
tian Era, many thousands of Christians lived in this peninsular, — some 
in monasteries, and very many as anchorites, scattered through the 
valleys and among the rocks about Serbal and Sinai. For some hun- 
dreds of years, pilgrims trooped hitherwards ; and the learned now 



JOURNEY TO SINAI. 



307 



suppose the inscriptions in Wadee Mokatteb and other places to record 
the names and blessings of pilgrims. If so, it is as desirable as ever 
to find a key to this character, that we may learn what unknown peo- 
ple, — or people who wrote in an unknown character, — shared, in for- 
mer days, the Jewish and Christian faith. — In the transactions of the 
Royal Society, a large number (I think 187) of these inscriptions are 
published, among which are nine Greek and one Latin ; but these do 
not help us to assign the rest to their origin. Dr. Lepsius conjec- 
tures these to be the work of Shepherds : but one does not see why, 
in that case, they should be found only in the way to sacred localities; 
— for instance, as far as Rephidim and El Erbayn at the foot of Horeb, 
and no higher up the Wadee el Ledja, 

Among these legends, and in many another spot hereabouts, are 
drawings on the rock which may well be the work of Bedoueen goat- 
herds. They are scratches, rather than carvings, of camels, goats and 
gazelles; — hugely-laden, crooked camels, — tumble-down goats, and 
most clumsy or scraggy gazelles. They are amusing, but not at all 
mysterious. 

In the afternoon, we found the tufts of desert shrubs becoming thicker 
and larger ; the tamarisks expanded into trees, and in an angle of the 
valley, unpruned palms showed themselves before us. Bishara and the 
dragomen began to look about for a resting-place; and they told us we 
were entering Wadee Feiran. As we turned that angle, we came upon 
inclosures; — the first we had seen since leaving the Wells of Moses. 
Thick palm groves now rose before us ; and it was pleasant to ride in 
among them, past walls and little flocks of goats tended by Arabs, over 
patches of damp soil, and under the declivities of Mount Serbal. Ser- 
bal rose grandly over all ; and it let down little streamlets, along 
whose margin fresh grass ran in lines beside the tracks. — In one spot, 
there was seen a fine sweep of the mountain ridge, where it is natural 
for those who believe this to have been the mountain of the Law, to 
see in vision the gathering of the clouds and the flashing of the 
lightnings. But there is no plain below from which the Hebrew mul- 
titude could have beheld this ; nor is there anywhere round the moun- 
tain a space which could aflbrd the spectacle to any large number of 
people. — I shall not enter upon the controversy about the spot of the 
giving of the Law. I am convinced that there is no evidence which 
can decide the matter; and that there never can be, because the pre- 
mises can never be fixed. While everybody believes the general 
fact of the leading of the Hebrews to this region, in order to prepare 
them for their future nationality, no one can say how much of the 
details is strictly historical, and how much legendary. The numbers 
and dates of the narrative are regarded by all the learned, I believe, as 
untenable ; as given, after the Hebrew manner, in the large, and in 
established terms, understood by Hebrew hearers, but altogether mis- 
leading to those who would take them as literally as if they had been 
assigned after, instead of before, the origin of true history. Learned 
men, who are up to the mark of historical science in our day, know 
that the Hebrews and their followers could not have amounted to two 



308 



EASTERN LIFE. 



millions of people when they left Egypt, and that the " forty years" 
and " forty days " assigned to a variety of transactions, is not to be taken 
literally, nor was ever meant to be so : and they are aware that it is ia 
vain to fix upon any particular mountain peak as that from which the 
Law was given. 

It is quite another question which was the sacred mountain in the 
belief of early times. In regard to this there is abundance of evidence. 
It is clear that Serbal and Sinai were both sacred mountains, and 
objects of pilgrimage from a very early age. The traveler cannot but 
see this on the spot: and if he is further disposed to occupy himself 
with the speculation which of the mountains of the region was in the 
mind of the writers of Exodus, he will do as travelers have hitherto 
done,-— fix upon the peak which in his view answers the most nearly 
to the points of the narrative. Of the few travelers who have been 
there, the greater number have pointed out some fresh spot which struck 
their fancy, in the absence of all evidence as to which the writers had 
in view. — If I were to do this, it would not be Serbal that I should 
fix upon ; because there is, as I said, no space within view of its peaks 
and ridge whence any large number could fix their gaze on any one 
suitable point of the mountain. Yet it is clear that, for some reason or 
other, Serbal was largely resorted to by devotees and pilgrims, and 
probably through many ages ; — as was also Sinai. — Many inscriptions 
are found on the rocks near the summit of Serbal ; and there is a road 
up to its peak. In Wadee Feiran the rocks are dotted with caves, — 
the abodes and tombs of ancient anchorites and devotees. What traces 
of sanctity remain about Sinai, we shall presently see. 

We wandered on in the valley for about a mile beyond the spot I 
mentioned as afiording a fine view of the pinnacles of Serbal ; and 
then we took up our rest in a truly delicious nook. Serbal was almost 
overhead, and other mountains enclosed us round. On the slope be- 
hind us were the remains of the ancient town known to have existed 
here ; and at its base ran a little streamlet in a mossy channel, over- 
hung v/ith tamarisks and palms. Caves yawned in all the precipices 
round; and soon, when the large moon rose, the whole was like a rich 
dream, — except for the voices and laughter of a party of our Arabs 
round a great fire, which gleamed upon the high screen of tamarisks 
which sheltered them from the night breeze. 

In the morning I was out in time to see some of the stars go down 
behind the mountain peaks, and others fade in the dawn. It was so 
warm here that I put off" my cloark while at breakfast in the open air 
before sunrise. By six o'clock I was walking forwards, wishing to 
examine some of the caves. Those to which I climbed were mere 
cells, rude and unshapen ; just answering to one's childish notions of 
an anchorite's cell. Some had as many as four chambers, I was told ; 
but none that I visited had more than two. I observed a seat appa- 
rently cut into the rock on the margin of the runnel, where it spreads 
into a brook ; and I wondered who planted it there ; for it was too con- 
venient and pleasant to have been done with the good-will of ancho- 
rites. — Then I walked through palm-groves, and in and out among 



JOURNEY TO SINAI. 



309 



inclosures, delighting my eyes with the asphodel which blossomed 
richly in the crevices of the rocks ; — sometimes within reach, so that 
I had actually bouquets to present to my friends when they overtook 
me. There is nothing like the words written down at the time; so 
here are those of my journal of that date. " Paths through the 
tamarisks; and Arab tents, and black goats and swathed goat-herds; 
and the first sunlight dropping in through the mountain clefts, — golden 
beyond description, and making golden the waving palm tops in the 
illumined nook I looked down upon. On turning round, I saw our 
loaded camels coming winding through the tall stems behind me, and 
their drivers among the trees. How must Feiran (if then like what 
it is now) have appeared to the Israelites after their wandering in the 
arid places of the Desert! But it is not fertile, as some authors say, 
who mean by that that it is cultivated. I saw nothing grown by hus- 
bandry ; and the soil is sandy as elsewhere. Tender grass and cresses 
spring in the brook ; and there are tufts of herbage and weeds in the 
rock-clefts: but the palms are unpruned, and all is wild, however 
sweet. — As we pursued the wadee, the vegetation subsided into the 
usual Desert tufts ; and the way was hot and dry. Our last views of 
Mount Serbal were very fine as it towered, — all in lilac hues and blue 
shadows, — above the nearer mountains behind us. Before us were 
rising all the morning, the peaks of the Sinai nucleus." 

It was this which made that Saturday, the 6th of March, a remarka- 
ble day to us. On this day, we traveled from Wadee Feiran to Mount 
Sinai, and at night we rested in the convent. 

It must be understood that the whole cluster of mountains before us 
is called Sinai; — the whole region which arises above the plain. At 
a considerable elevation, a wide plain spreads, out of which branch 
many wadees. From this plain springs a cluster of rocky mountains, 
at whose base lies the convent of Mount Sinai. — Further, — this cluster, 
as seen from the plain, is called at this day (however it might be for- 
merly) Horeb : and when the heights of Horeb are attained, other 
mountains or peaks arfe seen to spring, which are invisible from below. 
The two principal peaks are those of Moses or Sinai Proper, and 
Saint Catherine. Thus, there are two great ascents to reach the 
base of Sinai Proper: and the first of these we accomplished this 
morning. As my journal says — " We followed wadees, crossed 
low ridges, dipped down into a deep, narrow, tufted valley, drank 
water from our skins, crossed and emerged, and entered upon the 
defile which leads to the plain of Sinai. What a rugged and steep 
ascent it is, — winding always, but never with any terrific depth below ! 
I kept my seat till we reached our lunching-place, in the shadow of 
rocks, whence we saw the rear of our caravan creeping over the levels 
below. Then I walked some way, but was soon glad to mount my 
camel, which seemed well at home in this chaos. The coloring of 
the rocks was as vivid and striking as at any former point of our journey ; 
and the myrtle green of the shale was relieving to the eye. — We came 
out at last upon the plain where one would like to think the Hebrews 
were encamped; a level expanse of sand, tufted with Desert plants; 



310 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and out of it springs, directly before us, the cluster of peaks which is 
now called Horeb. On this plain were Arabs and goats ; and a long 
shadow was flung across it, below Horeb, from the western mountain. 
— Soon, as we speeded over the plain, we came in sight of the convent, 
lying beautifully in the deep shadow of Horeb, aslant up the western 
slope, — and with tall cypresses and some greener trees springing from 
within its fortress-like walls. It was very beautiful from this distance, 
— snug in its extremely narrow valley. — We saw to the right, at the 
base of the mountain, the second garden of the convent, with cypresses 
and green foliage like the other. — Next, we passed the Arab cemetery, 
a crowd of little rude stones. — Then we rode over shelves of rock up 
to the convent, and past its inclosure walls, which are of various dates 
and materials, but chiefly of large crude brick, with occasional heavy 
blocks of stone. — Some travelers' tents were under the walls, and 
groups of Arab boys were loitering about. The windlass at the place 
of entrance was at work, and two monks looked down upon us from 
their terrace on the walls. — Mr. Y. went up by the windlass, after his 
letter, to present his respects to the Prior. We looked upon his 
swinging ascent with some wonder what we should do, if the other 
entrance of which we had heard should be closed against strangers 
now. Dut a monk soon invited us within a well-secured postern, and 
lighted us with his lantern through a dark passage, and then led us 
through the green and blossomy and terraced garden, and up from one 
stair-case and platform to another, till we arrived at the strangers' 
corridor, whence we could overlook much of the curious complication 
of buildings and spaces which constitute the interior of the convent of 
Mount Sinai." 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI— ASCENT OF DJEBEL MOUSA.— ASCENT 

OF HOREB. 

The first thing known of the settlement of this place and neighbor- 
hood is that the Empress Helena, in the fourth century, built a small 
church over the spot where the Burning Bush grew. Who there was 
to tell the Empress where the Bush grew, is not known; nor how the 
tradition had been preserved for nearly two thousand years. Several 
small convents were built in the peninsula, after Helena's church be- 
gan to attract devotees ; but the Bedoueens were so dangerous and 
troublesome that the Christians of the region petitioned Justinian to 
build them a fortified convent. He sent workmen, Burckhardt tells us,* 
from Constantinople and Egypt, with orders to build an impregnable 
monastery on the top of Djebel Mousa, — that peak being in his day 
supposed to be the one from which the Law was given. There being no 
water at that height, the workmen built the convent at the foot of Horeb, 



* Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 545. 



CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI. 



311 



inclosing within its walls the well at which it is said Moses was the first 
to drink. The monks believe that Justinian gave the whole of the penin- 
sula to their estabhshment ; and that so nnany sacred buildings and 
hermitages arose in consequence, that six or seven thousand monks and 
hermits were inhabiting the region at the time of the Mohammedan 
conquest. 

The worship is now solely that of the Greek church : but there 
was a time when many forms of religion were on an equality here. 
Beside the great Greek church, stood the Mosque, whence the Muezzin 
might, within the walls of this Christian convent, call the Faithful to 
prayer. The Latins, Armenians and Syrians had chapels also : but 
the Greek is the only one now in use. There were about thirty monks 
when we were there, some of whom appeared to have suffered from 
the severity of their rule. They have an establishment at Cairo, which 
is a resource to them against much want and danger which they must 
otherwise suffer under. Their corn comes from Cairo ; most of the 
soil for their several gardens comes thence on the backs of camels. 
These gardens are of great importance to them,- — not only because 
they depend on them for their supply of vegetables, while never touch- 
ing animal food, and because they propitiate the Bedoueens with fruit, 
but because their reputation largely depends on the great quantity of 
medicinal and sacred herbs which they send into the world every sea- 
son. The gardens are carefully cultivated, terraced, and well irrigated. 
When we were there, the blossomy almonds and peaches, and the vivid 
green of the herb beds, among the tall dark cypresses and spreading 
olives, were a feast to the eye. 

Before we went, we called this the Convent of St. Catherine, as every- 
body does. We had read of it under that name, and seen that name 
under every print of the place that had come before our eyes. Our 
surprise was therefore great when a monk who had taken the vows 
twenty years before, declared that he did not know it by that name- 
Being asked whether the convent had nothing to do with St. Catherine, 
he replied, only by the bones of a hermitess, named Catherine, having 
been found on the mountain above the convent which bears her name. 
Perplexed by this, I was yet more surprised when I observed a little 
Catherine-wheel rudely carved over one of the posterns : and a picture 
of the saint, leaning on her wheel, in the library, with her name at 
length. In the chapel also her relics lie in state, — those bones which 
were found on the mountain-top, and were brought hither by the monks 
a few years after the establishment of the convent. The monk, how- 
ever, stuck to his declaration that the convent had no connection with 
St. Catherine : and we suspected there was some misunderstanding 
between him and the interpreter, — our dragoman. Since my return, 
however, I have found the solution of our difficulty in Burckhardt,* 
who seems to elucidate everything he touches. He says : — " M. Seet- 
zen has fallen into a mistake in calling the convent by the name of St. 
Catherine. It is dedicated to the Transfiguration, or, as the Greeks 



Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 553. 



312 



EASTERN LIFE. 



call it, the Metamorphosis, and not to St. Catherine, whose relics only 
are preserved here." We asked the monk what, according to him, the 
name of the convent vras ; and he repHed the Convent of Mount Sinai, 
—saying nothing about the Transfiguration. 

There is a large Mosaic representation of the Transfiguration in the 
dome of a chapel ; a curious specimen of art to he seen in such a place. 
But the pride of the brethren is in the chapel of the Burning Bush. 
We were desired to enter it barefoot ; but as I had laced boots on, I 
ventured to disobey, and passed without remark. Our monk-guide 
reverently bent under the altar, and removed a silver plate which covers 
the spot where the Bush grew. The Bush itself, however, flourishes 
elsewhere, in one of the courts,— a shrub of the Ribes kind, I think, 
which was sprouting vigorously. The monk, who plucked some twigs 
for those who would accept them, said with enthusiasm that it had 
never drooped : " and now," he continued, "that it has flourished for 
three thousand years, I am sure it will never die." The library con- 
tains a large number of Greek books of monkish devotion, and a few 
Arabic manuscripts, of which Burckhardt gives some account. I 
picked up there an odd volume of the " Spectator," left, no doubt, by 
some traveler. Its title-page and fly-leaf are scribbled over with pious 
curses by the Rev. Joseph Wolff', who begins his vituperation with 
" He who left this book in this place merits to be beaten with forty 
stripes save one," 6cc. &c. 

The Monks sell Manna to strangers, in little round boxes, wherein 
it coagulates to a mass, but melts when exposed to the sun. This sub- 
stance exudes from the tamarisk in summer, and is most plentif'ul after 
the most copious rains. It drops upon the ground from the twigs of 
the tamarisk, which grows abundantly in the neighboring wadees. 
The manna is picked up before sunrise, as it melts afterwards. The 
Arabs boil and strain it, and keep it in skins, to serve instead of honey: 
and very nourishing aliment it is said to be, if used sparingly. Its ap- 
pearance is not very tempting. 

The monks make palm brandy in abundance, and drink it too. The 
pale-faced and shrunken guide who took us up the mountain, could not 
be induced to eat cold fowl: it would be a sin to touch animal food ; but 
he took a brave pull at the brandy bottle. Such are the differences of 
morals among Christians I 

I think the unfavorable position of the convent must be partly an- 
swerable for the pale faces of most of its inhabitants ; though poor diet 
and severe vigils, and apprehensions from the Bedoueens have, no 
doubt, much to do with it. ?klrs. Y. and I had the best room in the 
convent, — spacious, clean, and with plenty of windows ; but I could not 
sleep ; and the sense of oppression, while within the walls, was remark- 
able. This is not to be wondered at, as a free circulation of air is im- 
possible. The valley is so narrow as to be filled up, within twenty 
feet or so, by the building, which slopes up the mountain backwards ; 
and the south end is closed in, at a short distance, by a precipitous bar- 
rier. It is open only to the north ; and how the place can be endured 
in summer, I cannot conceive. The elevation of the whole region, it 



CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI. 



313 



is true, is such that the season is more backward than that of Cairo by 
two months : but this elevation can avail little to an abode placed in an 
abyss of bare rocks. I was struck with this the first night, when I 
went out into our corridor, after ten o'clock, to see the moon come up 
between two peaks, — her hght being already bright on the western 
summits. Still and sweet as was the scene, — the air being hazy with 
moonlight in this rocky basin, there was something oppressive in the 
nearness of the precipices, and I could not but wonder what state of 
nerve one would be in during summer, and in seasons of storm. The 
lightning must fill this space like a flood ; and the thunder must die 
hard among the echoes of these steep barriers. As for the thunder, 
Burckhardt heard a curious tale here. He says :* — " Several Be- 
doueens had acquainted me that a thundering noise, like repeated 
charges of heavy artillery, is heard at times in these mountains ; and 
they all affirmed that it came from Om Shomar. The monks cor- 
roborated the story, and even positively asserted that they had heard 
the sound about mid-day, five years ago, describing it in the same man- 
ner as the Bedoueens. The same noise had been heard in more re- 
mote times, and the Ikonomos, who had lived here forty years, told me 
that he remembered to have heard the noise at four or five separate 
periods. I inquired whether any shock of an earthquake had ever 
been felt on such occasions, but was ansv^^ered in the negative. Wish- 
ing to ascertain the truth, I prepared to visit the mountain of Om Sho- 
mar." — He did so, and " could nowhere find the slightest traces of a 
volcano." 

What must the reverberating thunder have been among these preci- 
pices to the Hebrews, who had scarcely ever seen a cloud in the sky ! 

If the monks looked pale-faced to us, we must have presented an ex- 
traordinary spectacle to them, — with our faces, — some red, some brown, 
and our parched and cracked lips. As we looked round upon one 
another, we saw complexions of all hues between a boiled lobster and 
a mahogany table. It is better so than to annoy one's self with the 
weight of an umbrella and the stifling of a veil. I threw aside my veil 
after one or two trials. Its shifting threads are painful to the eyes 
amidst the glare of the Desert. I was well satisfied with my goggles, 
— not of glass, which is heating, and might be broken, — but of black 
woven wire, which admits the air freely, and cannot get spoiled. As 
for the rest, we wore broad-brimmed hats, and, for the most part, took 
no further pains, trusting that time would make us look like ourselves 
again. 

The monks have lately built a new set of guest chambers, in which 
the greater part of our company were lodged. These rooms are made 
as comfortable as possible, under the circumstances : and there we re- 
mained from Saturday afternoon till Wednesday morning. We were 
waited upon, of course, by our own people; and served, for the most 
part, with our own utensils and stores ; while a monk was at our call, 
to give us guidance and information. When the time came for settling 



* Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 586. 



314 



EASTERN LIFE. 



accounts, the gentlemen concerned with the Prior thought him rapacious, 

— as former priors have been considered by former travelers ; and this, 
after every regard being paid to his isolated position, and the circum- 
stances of his establishment. Within the convent, everything is done 
by the monks themselves, who are educated to their respective offices. 
A tribe of Arabs are the outdoor servants or serfs of the estabhshment, 
— being employed to fetch and carry, bring wood and prepare charcoal, 
keep the sheep and goats, and spin the wool, &c. : in return for which 
offices, they are fed according to their need. 

On the Sunday morning, some of the gentlemen went to early mass, 
— at six, — and thought the ceremonial and appurtenances very superb. 
Our company were free to have their own service in the morning: and 
we made a quiet day of it, merely going out in the afternoon for a walk 
in the neig-hboring' wadees. Some of us studied the outside of the con- 
vent and its garden, and went to see the ravine by which we were to 
ascend the next day to Sinai Proper, or Djebel Mousa. It did not look 
very formidable ; and we were happy to observe that we should have 
shade on our side of the mountain for nearly the whole time. 

By the same hour the next day, I was convinced that, of the many 
mountains I have climbed, Sinai is the easiest of ascent. I found 
really no fatigue at all in it. Much of our ease was, no doubt, owing 
to the deep shade in which our path lay : but something also to the 
steps which are still available for the greater part of the way. Ac- 
cording to tradition, and to all appearance, there was formerly one long 
staircase from the base of Horeb to the pinnacle of Djebel Mousa; the 
number of steps being variously reported as from fourteen to fifty thou- 
sand. It is the greatest possible help, in ascending a mountain, to be 
saved all uncertainty of footing. With this advantage, shade, water, 
and plenty of time, we found the expedition as easy as it was interest- 
ing. 

Within half an hour we arrived at the well-known spring of ice-cold 
water, which lay dark in its pool within the rock, fringed with the deli- 
cate fern dropping out of every crevice. The next striking object was 
the arch spanning the road which marks this as a sacred journey. The 
effect is strange, of a portal erected in a ravine, — a sort of leave of access 
to the mountain top : and the distant views row opening are exceed- 
ingly impressive when seen through the arch. Soon after, the guide 
cried out •' Half way," and the least able of us felt that we should all 
reach the summit. Next, we arrived at the plain at the top of Horeb ; 
the plain from which spring the peaks of Moses and of St. Catherine, 
and some others. In the midst stands, in mournful solitude, a cypress, 
planted by the monks a hundred years ago: and near it, the poor little 
chapel of St. Elias. We had already passed the small chapel of Santa 
Maria. In this plain it was, according to the Kuran, that Moses com- 
municated with God ; and we find many Arabic inscriptions here cut 
on the stones by Mohammedan devotees. In their belief, this is the top 
of Horeb, and the holiest place. They have a mosque, however, on 
the summit of Djebel ]\Iousa, a few paces from the Christian church 
which occupies the highest pinnacle. 



BASE OF HOREB. 



315 



We were now about three quarters of an hour from the convent ; and 
there was another half hour's chmbing before us. The ascent here 
became steeper; but it was still easy. Near the summit we saw wider 
and wilder views than before, through a second arch. At the top, we 
followed the advice of our guide in resting and refreshing ourselves in 
the shade of the convent, before looking about us in the glaring sun. I 
thought I had never seen such sunhght, as it streamed into the dark 
vaulted chamber, through and over the fine group of Arab boys who 
filled up the doorway. 

What a view it was when we came out! Burckhardt missed it, 
through the provoking accident of a thick fog. As for us, we saw 
everything radiantly that came within the capacity of the eye at all. 
For a vast distance round, it was one billowy expanse of brown sum- 
mits, arid beyond description, and unrelieved by any variety of color, 
or by any glimpse of valley or plain. This summit is certainly not 
visible from any plain: and, in regard to that consideration, it is not 
superior in its claims to Serbal. Serbal rose finely above a nearer 
ridge. Some of us thought we could discern the sea on that side; but 
we remained uncertain about it. The other sea line, the Gulf of Akaba, 
was plain enough, a Hne of gray between two of sand. To the north, 
there was the relief of a white ridge above the desolate brown; — hills 
in the El Tiheh reo^ion. The scene was altosfether strangfe and deso- 
late ; — most like one's notion of an antecedent age of our globe, — a time 
before man was created, when deep calling to deep, and thunders re- 
sponding to thunders, and monsters slow moving in wildernesses, had 
the world all to themselves. I am thankful to have seen it; for, whe- 
ther it be one of the historical holy places or not, its singular wildness 
renders it quite sacred enough. 

We found the descent perfectly easy, and had the advantage of a cool 
breeze, in addition to the shade. We returned quite untired, and lost 
no time in making our arrangements for an ascent of Horeb, the next 
day. 

In the morning, it appeared that only six of our fourteen would un- 
dertake the more laborious work of to-day. Of these six, I was one. — 
The expedition proved so much more interesting than even that of yes- 
terday, that I was concerned for those who stayed behind. 

We left the convent at seven, — after breakfast, — skirting the base of 
Horeb till we came to one of the principal shows of the place, — the 
stone in which Aaron moulded the head of the golden calf. Burck- 
hardt speaks of it as " the head of the golden calf, transmuted into 
stone," and continues:* " it is somewhat singular that both the monks 
and the Bedoueens call it the cow's head (Ras el Bakar), and not the 
calf's, confounding it perhaps with the ' red heifer' of which the Old 
Testament and the Kuran speak. It is a stone half buried in the 
ground, and bears some resemblance to the forehead of a cow. Some 
travelers have explained this stone to be the mould in which Aaron cast 
the calf, though it is not hollow but projecting: the Arabs and monks, 



* Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 583. 



316 



EASTERN LIFE. 



however, gravely assured me that it was ' the cow's' head itself." — I do 
not know what to make of this, unless we suppose Burckhardt's guide 
to have shown him a different stone from the one pointed out to us, 
which was hollow ; — the hollow being something of the form of a cow's 
head, and being certainly represented to us as the mould in which the 
head of the calf was cast. — As to its being called " the cow" by the 
monks and Arabs, it does not much matter. The Hebrews had seen as 
much of the cow of Alhor as of the bull Apis in Egypt; and tradition 
might nearly as well assign, the one object as the other. The Old Tes- 
tament, however, declares it to have been a young bull ; and when Aaron 
presented it to the people as the god that brought them out of Egypt, 
he was more likely to have had the god than the goddess in his mind. 

We next passed the fine garden belonging to the convent which I 
mentioned as being on our right when we first arrived. We did not 
enter it, but enjoyed in passing the sight of its blossoming fruit-trees. 
From this time, we saw many inscriptions on the rocks, as we passed 
up through the narrow wadee called El Ledja. The character is of the 
same unreadable kind as in Wadee Mokatteb and at Mount Serbal, and 
proves that scribes of the class that went there had been here also. 
What their object was, — whether the mountain, or, as many have sup- 
posed, merely the rock which Moses struck for water, no one can con- 
fidently say. To me it seems improbable that so many should come 
for the sake of Rephidim merely, in so very early an age, — it must be 
so clear to even the blindest devotees that this could be no place for 
striking the rock for water, — natural springs abounding in the whole 
district. 1 should be disposed to consider the choice of this stone for a 
relic of the miracle the device of a comparatively modern monkish age. 
This rock was about twice the height of the tallest of our party ; nearly 
twelve feet. There are marks on it as of a rush of water. To leave 
such marks, however, the water must have rushed for some hundreds 
of years; and Burckhardt's opinion is that the chisel was the more pro- 
bable instrument. Still proceeding along El Ledja, we passed three 
gardens and a chaos of boulders, and at last sat down in the pleasant 
olive grove belonging to the small convent of El-Erbayn, " the Forty," 
so named from the forty martyrs who perished here ; — monks or an- 
chorites slaughtered by the Bedoueens. There are no clear particulars 
told on the spot; but Dr. Robinson points out^ that these forty martyrs 
were probably the thirty-eight killed, and two mortally wounded, of the 
hermits who were attacked by the Saracens in the fourth century, when 
the holy Superior Doulas retired, with a few companions, into a tower 
on the mountain. The story is that when the Saracens endeavored to 
attack the tower, the whole of the summit of the mountain became 
fiery; on seeing which, the enemy fled, leaving the monks free to 
come down and bury their dead. 

We were invited into this convent by our servants ; and we entered 
it through a little orchard of blossoming trees. Mats were spread for 
us in the gallery ; and there we were served with coffee, palm brandy, 



* Biblical Researches, &c., I. 1S2. 



ASCENT OF HOREB. 



317 



and dates preserved in oil — which some of the party found highly offen- 
sive, and others rather liked. This convent and garden are in the 
charge of the Arab dependents of the Christians ; and a few of the 
monks occasionally live here. About ten o'clock, we began to climb 
the mountain. As we were on the opposite side from that which we 
ascended yesterday, we were, of course, in the sunshine; and blazing 
and broiling sunshine it was, till we reached the highest ravine. Here 
was no path, nor any steps like those which had so aided us on the 
other side of the mountain. It was rough and toilsome climbing till 
we reached the little plain on which grows the solitary cypress. Then, 
after descending a little, we ascended a ravine which few travelers have, 
I believe, attempted, and where women had probably never before set 
foot. Dr. Robinson speaks strongly* of the difficulty and danger of 
the latter part of the ascent, which appears to have been more formi- 
dable to him than to us. When we reached our point, we thought no 
more of our fatigues, nor of our doubts how to get down again. There, 
besides all, or nearly all, that we saw yesterday, we beheld, stretched 
below us, the wide plain and its tributary wadees — a space amply suf- 
ficient for the encampment of the Hebrews, be their numbers what they 
might. " The whole plain," says Dr. Robinson,t " lay spread out be- 
neath our feet, with the adjacent wadees and mountains ; while Wadee 
esh-Sheikh on the right, and the recess on the left, both connected with, 
and opening broadly from, er-Rahah (the plain) presented an area which 
serves nearly to double that of the plain. Our conviction was strength- 
ened, that here, or on some one of the adjacent cliffs, was the spot where 
the Lord ' descended in fire' and proclaimed the Law. Here lay the 
plain where the whole congregation might be assembled ; here was the 
mount that could be approached and touched, if not forbidden ; and 
here the mountain brow, where alone the lightnings and the thick cloud 
would be visible, and the thunders and the voice of the trump be heard, 
when the Lord ' came down in the sight of all the people upon Mount 
Sinai.' " 

We chose for our resting-place the shadow of a rock where we sat 
long, looking abroad upon a scene which fulfilled all our expectations 
and desires. The spreading plain and its tributaries made the view a 
far finer one than that from Djebel Mousa. Again Serbal stood out 
grandly, towering above all the other mountains ; and again the eastern 
Arabian hills were exquisitely beautiful. Immediately below us was a 
fearful precipice which it was scarcely possible to look down steadily. 
It was only by being unable to discover the sea that we were aware of 
being at a lower point than yesterday. One alone of our party ven- 
tured up the small remaining distance ; and he went without shoes, 
and supported by two Arabs. 

After relating his process of measurement of the plain at the foot of 
Sinai, Dr. Robinson says :| — " We may, therefore, fairly estimate the 
whole plain at two geological miles long, and ranging in breadth from 



* Biblical Researches, &c,, I. 157. 



t Ibid. 158. X Ibid. 141. 



318 



EASTERN LIFE. 



one-third to two-thirds of a mile; or as equivalent to a surface of at 
least one square mile. This space is nearly doubled by the recess so 
often mentioned on the west, and by the broad and level area of Wadee 
Sheikh on the east, which issues at right angles to the plain, and is 
equally in view of the front and summit of the present Horeb. The 
examination of this afternoon convinced us that here was space enough 
to satisfy all the requisitions of the Scriptural narrative, so far as it re- 
lates to the assembling of the congregation to receive the Law. Here, 
too, one can see the fitness of the injunction, to set bounds around the 
mount, that neither man nor beast might approach too near. The en- 
campment before the Mount, as has been before suggested, mJght not 
improbably include only the head-quarters of Moses and the elders, and 
of a portion of the people ; while the remainder, with their flocks, were 
scattered among the adjacent valleys." To us it appeared probable 
that here, at least, was the place which the writer or writers of the 
Book of Exodus had in mind, as the scene of the giving of the Law ; 
and no one on the spot can avoid the conviction that the writer was in- 
timately acquainted with the locahties of the Peninsula of Sinai. 

The descent from our pinnacle was less difficult than we had ex- 
pected — probably from our being exhilarated by what we had seen. In 
the little plain of the cypress, coffee was brought to us by our drago- 
men, who were better aware than ourselves of what still lay before us. 
The guides now led us down by a ravine which descended directly 
upon the wadee in which the convent stands. This long pass was one 
continuous series of shattered rocks, so fatiguing to traverse that the 
strongest of us took shorter and more timorous steps, and more frequent 
rests, till the trembling of our Umbs made us glad to be at last within 
sight of home. The heat among the rock-shelves of the wadee was 
excessive ; and now having accompKshed all our objects in this singu- 
lar and interesting region, we were not sorry to see encamped behind 
the convent some of the camels and drivers with whom we were to 
proceed to-morrow towards the head of the Gulf of Akaba. 



CHAPTER V. 

MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 

The great interest of the Sinai region Hes in its unaltered and un- 
alterable character. There it is, feature by feature the same as when 
those events occurred which make it holy ground. In every other kind 
of scenery, there is more or less change, from one thousand years to 
another. The country is differently cleared, or cultivated, or peopled : 
even the everlasting Nile changes its course. But here, where there 
is neither clearing, nor cultivation, nor settled people, where it seems 
as if volcanic action only could make new features in the scene, and 
where volcanic action does not seem probable, there is no impediment 
to one's seeing Sinai as it was when Moses there halted his people. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



319 



And I did so see Sinai, during tiie memorable Sunday we spent there. 
Turning my back on the convent, and forgetting the wretched supersti- 
tions of the monks, I looked abroad that day with the eyes of a disciple 
of Moses, who had followed his footsteps from Memphis hither ; and I 
saw more than by many years' reading of the Pentateuch at home. 
How differently the Pentateuch here reads, from the same worn old 
Bible which one has handled for five-and-twenty years, I could not have 
imagined. The light from Egypt and Arabia shining into it illuminates 
unthought-of places, and gives a new and most fresh coloring to the 
whole. I httle thought ever to have seen so much of Moses as I did 
this day, within sight of Arab tents, like those in which he and Zipporah 
and their children lived when first here with Jethro's flocks ; within 
sight of the same peaks which were landmarks to the wandering tribes ; 
and of the same wadees where they rested, and surrounded by the 
very same mountain springs whence they brought water for themselves 
and their flocks. The wells within the convent seem to have been 
always inexhaustible; yet I dare say some of the Hebrew women 
and children discovered the ice-cold spring behind, which has no 
doubt lain in its shadowy nook since Horeb was upreared. I wonder 
whether it was fringed with ferns when the Hebrew women saw it, as 
it is now. It was a tempting place for gossip, — for sitting down in the 
shade to talk over the comforts of Goshen, and the verdure of Egypt, 
and pointing out the dreariness of this place, and reminding one an- 
other how unwilKng they and their husbands had been to leave Egypt, 
foreseeing that they should only get into trouble by trying a new 
country.* In yonder plain was the crowd of dark, low tents, with 
no tabernacle yet in the midst. Among the neighboring wadees were 
the herdsmen dispersed, tending their flocks every day of the week ; 
for as yet there was no Sabbath. This, and very much more did I see 
on that Sunday at Sinai ; much that I could not have seen if I had been 
a cotemporary disciple of Moses ; — much that can be seen only by the 
light of an after age, of the educational purposes and processes for which 
the Hebrews were brought here. 

Here, in some nook which had been his haunt while watching his 
flocks, sat Moses in those days, overlooking the flock which he was 
now to lead as the Shepherd of Men. How intense must have been his 
sense of solitude here ! No longer learning, in congenial companion- 
ship, "all the wisdom of the Egyptians," but alone, — he the only wise 
and the only earnest man among a multitude who had no wisdom and 
no virtue; — he, a man of fine organization, of gentle rearing, of timid 
nature, "looking before and after," and overwhelmed with what he 
saw, — how could he sustain himself under his charge ? Without ir- 
reverence, we may attribute to him the sustaining thought which was 
uttered by one long after him : " the world hath not known thee ; but I 
have known thee." Retired into the mountain to pray, he saw be- 
neath him, — not the gleaming lake, on whose shores were those whom 

* Exodus XIV. 12.—" Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, 
let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians?" 



320 



EASTERN LIFE. 



he was to make " fishers of men;" not fields " white unto the harvest," 
but only parched wilds thronged with people from whom he could 
choose none to help him and carry out his work. That land of the 
lake and ripening fields lay, not beneath him, but far away in the 
future, — seen only in faith, and never to be entered by him: his sup- 
ports must therefore be from faith and benevolence; — from his trust in 
God and his love to his brethren ; and we may hope and believe that 
amidst his anxieties and tremblings, his doubts of himself and his shame 
for the people under his charge, these were enough. We may trust 
that he had his hours of comfort and high hope in his mountain retire- 
ments. It is impossible to avoid endeavoring to enter into his mind, 
when on the spot of his meditations. We cannot help "looking before 
and after," from his point of view, by the light which he himself has 
given us, — the glory which shines from his face even upon our time, 
brightened as it is by that greater light which afterwards arose "to en- 
lighten the gentiles, and glorify the people Israel." 

By his priestly rank and privileges, Moses knew the Mysteries of 
Egyptian worship. He was the only one of the multitude at Sinai who 
knew, what we all know, or may know, now, — that the two chief objects 
of all the heathen Mysteries were the preservation of the doctrine of the 
Divine Unity, and the detection or explanation of Idolatry. The Orphic 
Hymn,* sung by the initiated in Mysteries which were derived from 
Egypt, was familiar truth to him: — "I will declare a secret to the 

initiated ; but let the doors be shut against the profane I shall 

utter the truth without disguise. Suffer not, therefore, thy former pre- 
judices to debar thee from that happy life which the knowledge of these 
sublime truths will procure unto thee : but carefully contemplate this 
divine oracle, and preserve it in purity of mind and heart. Go on, in 
the right way, and contemplate the sole Governor of the world. He 
is One, and of Himself Alone; and to that One all things owe their 
being. He operates through all, was never seen by mortal eyes, but 
does Himself see every one." Moses knew that this subhme truth of the 
Mysteries was once the common faith of men, though it was now called 
Atheism, from the contempt it was supposed to cast upon the popular 
gods ; and that it must again become the faith of mankind, through him, 
amidst all the difficulty and suffering which attend a return from error 
to a fundamental primitive idea. , He knew that before he could see 
his hope fulfilled, — his hope that every Hebrew would worship Jehovah 
as his father Abraham had done, — the people must go through a pro- 
cess of training as painful to himself as irksome to them. But this was 
,the work he had to do; and he had brought them hither to begin iCj 

"With regard to the other part of the Secret," (of the Mysteries,) says 
Bishop Warburton,t "the doctrine of the Unity, Clemens Alexandri- 
nus informs us that the Egyptian mystagogues taught it amongst their 
greater secrets. 'The Egyptians,' says he, 'did not use to reveal their 
mysteries indiscriminately to all, nor expose their truths concerning 

* Quoted hy Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius. — See " Warburton's Divine 
Legation of Moses," I. 232. 

t Diviiae Legation of Moses, I. 223. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



321 



their gods to the profane, but to those only who were to succeed to the 
administration of the State: and to such of the priests as were most 
approved by their education, learning, and quality.'" 

It was the glory of Moses that he saw how such a truth concerned 
all the children of men : how this was a matter in which those were 
the truly profane who monopolized the truth, and dishonored God by 
hiding him from the minds and hearts of mankind at large ; and not 
those outside who could not pay homage to a God of whom they had 
never heard. His was the enterprise of laying open the Mysteries 
to all, and of making of the Hebrews a high-caste nation. It could 
not be done anywhere but in the Desert. The isolation of the Desert 
was required quite as much for the safety of the announcement as for 
the training of the people in their purified faith. In Egypt, or any 
other heathen country, the doctrine of Moses would have excited hor- 
ror, as the Atheism* of those days ; and he would himself have been 
torn to pieces as that greatest of criminals, a revealer of the Mysteries. 
He came into the desert to do the daring Deed : and how the results 
were estimated in the future days of his nation, Josephus shows us in 
a passage of his Reply to Apion which is singularly interesting to us 
here. This citizen of a high-caste nation tells Apion that the highest 
and sublimest knowledge held by a few of the gentiles, and enjoyed 
only on the rare occasions of their Mysteries, was the daily privilege 
of the whole Hebrew people. He says,t " Can any government be more 
holy than this ? or any religion better adapted to the nature of the Deity? 
Where, in any place but this, are the whole people, by the special di- 
ligence of the priests, to whom the care of public instruction is com- 
mitted, accurately taught the principles of true piety ? So that the body 
politic seems, as it were, one great assembly^ constantly kept together, 
for the celebration of some sacred mysteries. For those things which 
the gentiles keep up for a few days only, that is, during those solemni- 
ties they call Mysteries and Initiations, we, with vast delight, and a 
plenitude of knowledge which admits of no error, fully enjoy, and per- 
petually contemplate through the whole course of our lives. If you ask 
the nature of those things which in our sacred rites are enjoined and 
forbidden, I answer, they are simple, and easily understood. The first 
instruction relates to the Deity, and teaches that God contains all 
THINGS, and is a Being every way perfect and happy; that he is self- 
existent, and the Sole Cause of all existence; the Beginning, Middle, 
and End of all things," &c. 

The Supreme, as made known in the heathen Mysteries, exercised 
no immediate government over men ; and in order to give them any 
idea of a divine government, national and subordinate gods were pre- 
sented to them, who must, of course, be named. Much superstition in 
Egypt was connected with the names of the gods; and the Hebrews 
could not, as the history shows us, recognize a protecting god, who was 

* It is instructive to see what the " Atheism" 'of Epicurus was, in that saying of 
his which' Lord Bacon declares (Essay 16, "of Atheism,") that it is worthy of Plato: 
"Non deos vulgi negate profanum ; sed vulgi opiniones diis applicare profanum." 

t Cont. Ap. lib. XL, cap. 22. Quoted by Warburton, Divine Leg. I. 225. 
21 



322 



EASTERN LIFE. 



declared to them as a patriarchal, and was henceforth to be a national 
C-iod, but through a rsame. The tirst request recorded to be made by 
Moses was to be commissioned to declare a Name'to the people: an in- 
cident which shows how completely they had lost the knowledire of 
One CTod, and how thoroughly polytheistic were their religious ideas. 
And these were the people whom he had to bring into a clear moral 
relation with one divine Ruler, under such definite sanctions as should 
keep their minds from going astray among various objects of worship ! 
No wonder it was long, — many generations — before they conceived of 
Jehovah as more than a National God. He was the God of their fathers, 
and their OAvn : better and stronger than the gods of other nations, — 
and even their over-ruler : but still, the God of none but the Hebrews : 
— the benefactor of the children of Abraham, but the enemy of the 
Egyptians and the Canaaniles. 

In this last belief, it is clear that they were not contradicted or dis- 
couraged. In establishing a clear moral relation between them and One 
Divine Ruler, it was necessary to keep them out of the way of danger 
from the two most populous and civilized countries in the world, — 
£gvpt and Canaan. Here they were withdrawn into the Desert 
which lay between the abstract polytheism of the Egyptians and the 
elementary worship of the Canaanites ; but their minds were full of 
the remembrance of the one : and they must soon , as Moses then sup- 
posed^' come into the sight of the other. Besides attaching them to 
their God. it was evidently thought needful by him that they should 
consider their God to be the enemy of their enemies, in the land they 
the had left and that to which they were going. And thus was Jehovah 
God of the Hebrews alone for so long a time, that it is dirncult to learn 
from the history when the Jewish nation even began to be prepared for 
the nobler theological vieAvs presented by Christ. Low, in the compa- 
rison, as the ancient conception appears, we need only place ourselves 
back in the time of the Exodus to see how new and how mighty was 
the idea of the Supreme being a tutelary god. As we all know, it was 
too new and too mighty for the Hebrew mind of the time. 

As for 'he form which the relation between Jehovah and his people 
was to take, that was in entire agreement with the training of the 
mind of Moses, and the conceptions and needs of the people. The 
onlv form in which a divine orovernment could be recognized in those 
days, in Eaypt or elsewhere, was that of a theocracy. The individual 
called kin^;. in Egypt and elsewhere, was a priest; a vicegerent of the 
local god. But while these kings ruled in the name of the gods, and 
had the advantage of their authority, they appropriated to themselves 
the honors and privileges of royalty, and eclipsed to the people any 
sacred licrht which might have visited them from a direct relation with, 
anything divine. The noble, venerable, inestimable distinction between 

* As Lord Bacon observe?. "The Indians of the west have names ibr their par- 
ticular gotl^, thousili they have no name for God: as if the heathens should have had 
the names of Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, &:e., but not the word Dens: which shows, that 
even those barbarous people have the notion, though they have not the latitude and 
extent of it. " — Essay IQth, 0/ Atheism. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



323 



the Mosaic plan and that of any other theocracy was that here no such 
intervention was permitted. There was no man here to whom they 
were to bow the knee, and who was to tower between them and the 
h'ght of their life. Instead of a crowned priest, in royal chariot, riding 
over the people's necks to attend Mysteries in which he was to enjoy 
what they would never know, here was the meek magnanimous Moses 
standing barefoot and plainly clad, pointing the gaze of the people to 
the mountain top or to the sky, undergoing instead of enjoying power, 
and having nothing to ask of Jehovah or of his brethren but that He 
should be their God, and they should be His people. According to all 
that Moses had ever seen, learned, or thought, he must unite in him- 
self the offices of legislator and interpreter of the Divine Will. The 
lawgiver and priest were one in every country he had known or heard 
of: and he must be so now. But never before was there a Vicegerent 
of an Unseen Power so meek : and never a lawgiver so disinterested. 
We never think of him as the Pharaoh he might so easily have been; 
— more easily than he could be what he was. We think of him as 
one of the quietest men whose names have come down to our day ; a 
man struggling under a burden of duty and destiny which he found 
too heavy for him, and from which he would fain have shrunk, to 
hide himself again in the moist nooks of the Desert, with his sheep 
about him, and ruminate once more over " all the wisdom of the Egyp- 
tians." Yet, as he did not quit his work, and as he did achieve an en- 
terprise which will affect the destinies of mankind to the end of time, 
we may be assured that he had the support of that privileged thought, 
— "the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee." 

It appears as if there had been an intention and a hope of training 
the Hebrews to a state of knowledge and obedience by moral instruc- 
tion, and a plan of pure and simple worship ; the obedience of Abra- 
ham, and the simplicity of his worship in the door of his tent being per- 
haps the example and the aspiration which Moses had before him when 
he brought forth the Hebrews from Egypt. Warburton and others are 
of opinion that the ritual scheme was adopted after the affair of the 
golden calf, which showed the people to be more incapable of a pure 
religion and direct communication than could have been supposed. A 
comparison of the two sets of Commandments seems to countenance 
this view. The first set,"^ though falling below the inculcation of per- 
sonal righteousness, yet are of a much higher character than the second. 
They aim at a good degree of social order, for the age in which they 
were given, and contain nothing ritual except the precept about the 
Sabbath. This is the set brought down by Moses when he found the 
people feasting about the golden calf, and which he broke and threw from 
him. The second Ten,t which remained permanent, are such as may 
well be believed to have accompanied the ritual system now supposed 
to have been instituted. They are all ritual except the first two: these 
two merely forbidding all covenanting with heathens, and making of 
molten gods. The whole set contains no directions for personal or social 



Exodus XX. 3—18, 



f Exodus XXXIV. 12—27. 



324 



EASTERN LIFE. 



conduct. The fact certainly conveys the impression that a more ad- 
vanced system of Moral Government was withdrawn for the time, and 
replaced by one less advanced, in proportion to the disappointment 
caused by the lapse of the degraded people. The Jewish writers, for 
the most part, lay the blame of this lapse on the influence of the Egyp- 
tian mob, " the mixed multitude" who followed in the train of the He- 
brews :* but it does not save their credit at all to suppose them more 
easily influenced by such comrades than by Moses and the ideas he 
had communicated. However this may be, a ritual religion they were 
now to have : and in this ritual, they must have their Moral Govern- 
ment. Moses had been compelled to surrender his loftiest aim and 
hope — that of raising the people above a ceremonial worship. His 
object henceforth plainly was to elevate the ceremonial worship into as 
good a moral government as its nature would permit. 

In the great concern of all, — that of the Sanctions of the Moral Law 
which he gave, Moses made his third marked departure from the reli- 
gion of Egypt. The first was his la\ing open the Mysteries: the se- 
cond, his declaring the Supreme a tutelary god: and the third was his 
offering, as the Sanction of the Moral Law, Temporal Retribution in- 
stead of Future Reward and Punishment. 

Under every religious system, the excruciating difficulty has been 
the Existence of Evil. Individuals may reconcile themselves to the 
fact; and so many have succeeded in doing so, that the history of 
philosophy is full of the apologies of sages for the existence of Evil. 
But, as a philosophical question, the difficulty has never been touched; 
and philosophy has not yet discovered how it ever can be. The learn- 
ing of Moses taught him exactly what the deepest learning teaches the 
wisest men now, — the mischievous operation of this difficulty upon all 
religious systems that the world had known. He was aware that the 
most pernicious of all the discrepancies between the Mysteries and the 
popular knowledge lay in the respective views of the Initiated and the 
people about a future life. While the priests, unable to account for 
the inequalities of Providence in this life, taught that reward and 
punishment would restore the balance in the next, all philosophers 
whatever (Cicero tells us), held in common that God could not be angry; 
and that he could not hurt any one: that anger and favor are equally 
impossible to a happy and immortal Nature; and that therefore Fear 
can have no place in the mind of man in regard to God. — What a 
state of things was here ! As Plutarch says, You may examine the 
globe; and in no region where Man has lived will you find "a 
city without the knowledge of a god, or the practice of religion : with- 
out the use of vows, oaths, oracles, and sacrifices to procure good, or of 
deprecatory rites to avert evil ;" and elsewhere, again, he declares it to 
be so ancient an opinion that good men should be recompensed after 
death, that he could not reach either to the author or origin of it. Such 
was the escape for the multitude from the difficulty of the unequal dis- 
tribution of pain and pleasure among men : and while the multitude 



* Kitto s History of Palestine, p. 200 (note). 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



325 



received this on their authority, the Initiated were agreed that God was 
so free from affections and passions of every kind that he neither con- 
ferred good nor inflicted evil on individuals, at any time. — Warburton 
tells us, in the following passage, of a late result of this discrepancy, 
which shows us how the case must have appeared to one so learned 
and sagacious as Moses. 

"Lactantius, trom a forensic lawyer, now become an advocate for 
Christianity, found nothing so much hindered its reception with the 
learned as the doctrine of a Future Judgment; which their universal 
principle, that God could not be angry, directly opposed. To strike at 
the root of this evil, he composed a discourse which Jerome calls pul- 
cherrimum opus, entitled de ira dei; for he had observed, he tells us, 
that this principle was now much spread among the common people, 
he lays the blame of it upon the philosophers; and tells us, as Tully 
had done before, that all the philosophers agree to exclude the passion 
of anger from the Godhead."* The ground taken by Lactantius was 
that if God could not be angry, all religion was done away with, as a 
future state of retribution was thus excluded; he therefore contended 
that the God of the Christians was actuated, as man is, by love and 
hatred — only that they are always reasonable in Him — and he then 
proceeded to argue for God having a human form, as a necessary con- 
sequence of his sharing human passions. Into this we need not go. 
The important part of this citation is the testimony that the doctrine of 
a future Judgment was the obstacle to the reception of Christianity by 
the learned — and why? 

Moses saw thus that the doctrine of future reward and punishment 
was disbelieved by the learned, and was so far made a deception to the 
people as that the inevitable suffering which arises from sin, and the 
peace which attends goodness, were concealed from them under the 
disguise of arbitrary punishment and reward. The Initiated appear to 
have believed in a future life, and in the natural retribution by which, 
from their very constitution, the virtuous enjoy and the vicious suffer; 
but, in as far as they declared these things in the form of divine pro- 
mises and threats, contingent on future conduct, they deceived the 
people; and Moses as carefully avoided perpetrating this evil as any 
other connected wiih the Mysteries. 

The second ordinary way of meeting the difficulty of the existence 
of evil was no less familiar to him, from his position through life; the 
supposition of two opposing deities. He had seen in Egypt how from 
being brothers, children of one father, Osiris and Typho, Good and Evil, 
had become foes; and he had witnessed the moral mischief which arises 
from the belief of a malevolent spiritual being. We find therefore in 
the Mosaic system no more trace of an evil spiritual being, hostile to 
God and man, than of a future life of reward and punishment. The 
serpent in Eden is, in the history, a mere serpent, altogether Egyptian 
in its conception, and bearing no relation whatever to the Evil Being 
with which superstition afterwards connected it. Moses nowhere hints 



* Divine Legation, &c., I. 497. 



326 



EASTERN LIFE. 



at such a notion as that of an express Author of Evil. On the contrary 
his doctrine, consistent from end to end of his teachings, is that which 
Isaiah expressed afterwards in the plain w-ords:* "I am the Lord, and 
there is none else. I form the light and create darkness : I make 
peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things." 

As for the remaining method of attempting to account for the exist- 
ence of Evil— the allowing a separate and opposing operation to the 
high qualities of the Supreme — Moses had seen enough of the conse- 
quences of deifying the divine attributes to avoid all the unphilosophical 
methods in use elsew^here of setting up a rivalship betw^een Holiness 
and Compassion, between Justice and Mercy. He avoided this practice 
as the immediate origin of polytheism. The God of the Hebrews, as 
declared by him, was presented under the simple aspect of a Being in 
whom all powder and all w^ill were concentrated — the sole Ruler, who 
chose and governed this people by his simple and all-venerable Will. 

As for what Moses believed about the destiny of man after death, 
that is a question apart from what he taught to the people — apart from 
that of the Sanctions of the Law which he offered. He probably held 
the doctrine of his caste in Egypt — that the soul or life was an emana- 
tion from the Supreme, to be absorbed after death, and lose its separate 
existence. From the few and indistinct traces which remain in the 
Hebrew Scriptures of a traditional belief of some kind of futurity for 
man, it is probable that he thus held this doctrine of the Mysteries. 
But that he saw this doctrine to be as unpractical as every one sees it 
to be, is clear from the w^hole tenor of his life, conduct and doctrine. 
His sublime object of laying open the Mysteries to his whole people, 
his noble earnestness and unquestionable simplicity and sincerity prove, 
as strongly as act can prove thought, that he held no practical religious 
belief that he did not impart. 

The Sanction that he did present, w^e all know — Temporal Reward 
and Punishment. A more plain and practical doctrine ^vas never pre- 
sented to the mind of man than this of Moses; that every act of obedi- 
ence to the Will of Jehovah should be rew^arded by happiness in this 
life, and every act of disobedience punished by unhappiness. The 
happiness and unhappiness were to be substantial, generally immediate, 
and visible to the eyes of all men. Generally immediate, but not al- 
ways. Jehovah w^as loner-suffering, and might delay retribution ; but 
the evil would be suffered by the children, down to distant generations, 
if the sinner himself appeared to escape it. Not only was this procras- 
tination of punishment indicated by the fact of an unequal providence 
from day to day; but it afforded a hold upon a class of sinners who 
could not be otherwise wrought upon; the fearless and hardy, Avho 
would brave consequences for themselves, but whose parental affections 
would bear an appeal; or, at worst, their family pride — a strong passion 
among- the Hebrews. In this declaration of procrastination of punish- 
ment, we see also the first opening of that doctrine, which has since 
become so prominent in the religious life of man — the doctrine of Re- 



• Isaicib, XLV. 6, 7. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



327 



pentance. Of this great doctrine, which has perhaps more than any 
other influenced the spiritual hfe of mankind, the religion of Moses ap- 
pears to have opened the first suggestion. 

As his doctrine necessarily supposes an equal Providence in this hfe, 
the question unavoidably arises whether Moses believed in its simpli- 
city ; and if so, how he could believe it in the face of the facts which 
daily met his eyes. This great point of contrariety between the Mosaic 
and the Christian systems is usually considered the most perplexing 
that occurs. It was beautifully said both by Lord Bacon and Pascal, 
(by which first I cannot discover, — they being cotemporaries,) that 
"Prosperity was the promise of the Old Testament: Adversity of the 
New." This is most true and beautiful: a saying worthy of medita- 
tive Christians. It impels us to consider whether Moses could have 
simply and undeviatingly believed that every Hebrew was happy or 
unhappy according to his deserts. Here, in this Desert, did he see no 
person sick whom he could not believe to be guilty? Did he not see 
infants languishing with thirst ? Did he not see bold and irreligfious 
men appropriating comforts to themselves, to the injury of the gentle 
and obedient ? How this doctrine subsequently acted on the minds of 
the Hebrews, in the interpretation of the ways of God to man, we see 
everywhere, from the Books of Chronicles which, in recording any 
misfortune happening to anybody, always suppose or invent (as we 
see by a comparison with the parallel passages in Kings), a prior sin as 
the cause, up to the case of him concerning whom the disciples asked 
Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born 
blind?" The question is whether Moses, offering a sanction which 
required and supposed an equal Providence, simply held that the fact 
was so, without any doctrine of compensation whatever. Judging by 
the evidences we have everywhere else of his earnestness and open- 
ness, I cannot but believe that he did. And this, not by such consi- 
derations as Christians have the benefit of; considerations of the inte- 
rior peace which attends well-doing, and of the insignificance of the 
outward fortunes in comparison with the welfare of the mind, so that 
the whole world is no equivalent for the soul; but in a simple faith that 
Jehovah would and did deal with his people, — with every man, woman 
and child of them, — according to their deserts, manifesting his retribu- 
tion in their outward fortunes. In this view, it does not matter whether 
the obedience required was ritual or spiritual obedience. When there 
was no water, the multitude thirsted alike, — those who were too young 
■to sin under the law, as well as the mature; and before the time when 
■children could suffer for their parents' sin, as well as after. — Whatever 
was the inner conviction of Moses, such was the Sanction offered by 
him; in avoidance at once of the popular heathen doctrine of future 
reward and punishment, and of the polytheistic behef of an Evil Spirit 
contravening the goodness of God. 

The reward and punishment being individually experienced, as all 
enjoyment and suffering must be, had the law the individual for its 
object, or the public good ? About this there can be no question. The 
relation here was of King and people, leaving for Christianity the 



328 



EASTERN LIFE. 



nobler and dearer relation of Father and Child. Virtue here was, not 
rectitude, but obedience. Sin was, not corrupt thought, but failure of 
allegiance to the Divine King. The Commandments, therefore, — even 
the first ten, which are moral and not merely ritual hke the second, 
relate only to political or social virtue, leaving it to Christianity to 
w^ork out the nobler object of personal holiness. Such degree of self- 
government as is necessary for social virtue is of course supposed and 
required ; but merely such as is indispensable for the good of society 
and the honor of its Divine Ruler, and not that thorough interior puri- 
fication and discipline which Christianity offers to every man with no 
political view, but for his own sake. Our own Hooker seems to have 
described the scope of the first and higher set of Commandments, when 
he says,* " A politic use of religion there is. Men fearing God are 
thereby a good deal more effectually than by positive laws restrained 
from doing evil ; inasmuch as these laws have no further power than 
over our outward actions only: w^hereas unto men's inward cogitations, 
unto the privy intents and motions of their hearts, rehgion serveth for 
a bridle. What more savage, wild and cruel than jVi'an, if he see him- 
self able, either by fraud to overreach, or by power to overbear, the laws 
whereunto he should be subject? Wherefore in s- great boldness to 
offend, it behoveth that the world should be held in awe, not by a vain 
surmise, but a true apprehension of somewhat, which no man may 
think himself able to withstand. This is the Politic Use of Rehgion." 

Even this politic use was found to be of too high a character for the 
Hebrews as yet. When Moses came down from the Mount with the 
tables of the Moral Law in his hands, — came down perhaps by some 
one of the rocky chasms which I was exploring this Sunday at Sinai, 
— and looked towards the plain which I gazed on this day, he saw, 
not a people awaiting in awe the pleasure of their Divine King, but a 
crowd rejoicing in having possessed themselves of a god who would 
protect them back to Egypt; — back to the sweet Nile waters, and the 
merry feasts of idols. Instead of the cheerful response he looked for, 
as before, " and all the people answered together, and said, 'Ail that 
the Lord hath spoken, we will do,' " he heard the sound of shouts and 
singing as the people danced about their golden Apis. Then Moses 
not only destroyed the idol, but the tables of the Law; — "brake them 
beneath the Mount ;" and after a long and terrible conflict, surrendered 
his highest hopes for the people, and pursued a lower aim. — He gave 
them a ritual, Egyptian in its forms and seasons and associations, but 
with Jehovah alone for its object. The multitude were in fact inca- 
pable of receiving a faith without forms, as children are incapable of 
receiving abstract ideas but by means of illustrations : and they would 
have gone back to Egypt on the first disappointment or pretence, if 
Moses had not brought as much of Egypt as he could into the Desert 
to them. — He had all the requisite knowledge of Egyptian worship 
and ways. He had at his command, among the "mixed multitude," 
Egyptian artificers ; besides that many of the Hebrews themselves were 



* Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V. sec. 2. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SINAI. 



329 



no doubt skilled artisans. So he treated them as they compelled him 
to do. He offered them a new set of commandments, eight out of ten 
of which were about feasts and offerings, and sacrifices and holy days. 
He fixed upon the days of Egyptian feasts, knowing that the people 
would at all events observe the days of New Moon, First-fruits, &c., 
and securing this observance for Jehovah by special ordinance. He 
set them to work upon a tabernacle, — a movable temple for the Desert, 
as nearly as possible resembling an Egyptian temple. He made them 
an ark, — exactly like what the traveler in Egypt sees sculptured in the 
processions of the priests, on the walls of palaces and temples finished 
before Abraham was born. — He permitted to them an oracle, the Urim 
and Thummim, derived immediately from an Egyptain model. And 
most mournful to him of all, he had to give them a priesthood, like that 
which they had been accustomed to look up to as sacred. He had 
hoped to make of them a high-caste nation, and had delivered to them 
the announcement "And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, a 
holy nation."* But they could not yet take that rank: they were not 
adequate to that nrivilege; they preferred deputing their honors to a 
class, and withdrawing themselves behind this class from communion 
with Jehovah, and from the h'ght of his countenance. — It had become 
impossible for tht a to take up the patriarchal faith where their fathers 
had lost it: and the Egyptian element which could not yet be dislodged, 
required large accommodation. It is very interesting to read the account 
w^hich their own pious descendant, Maimonides, givest of this crisis in 
the life of his race. 

" As at that time the universal practice, and the mode of worship in 
which all were educated was, that various kinds of animals should be 
offered in the temples in which their idols were placed, and before 
whom their worshipers were to prostrate themselves and to burn in- 
cense ; and as there were also certain persons set apart for the service 
of these temples, therefore the Divine wisdom and Providence of God, 
which so eminently shines forth in all his creatures, did not ordain the 
abandonment or abolition of all such worship. For it is the well-known 
disposition of the human heart to cleave to that to which it has been 
habituated ; even in things to which it is not naturally inclined. To 
have decreed the entire abolition of all such worship would, therefore, 
have been the same as if a prophet should come and say, 'It is the 
command of God, that in the day of trouble ye shall not pray, nor fast, 
nor publicly seek him ; but your worship shall be purely mental, and 
shall consist in meditation, not in action.' On these accounts, the Cre- 
ator retained those modes of worship, but transferred the veneration from 
created things and shadows to his own Name, and commanded us to 
direct our religious services to himself." The learned disciple of 
Moses then goes on to give instances. To the traveler in Egypt, the 
most cursory glance at the Jewish law will show the identity of the 
religious customs and manners of the iwo peoples ; and the deepest 

* Exodus XIX. 6. 

t Cited by Kitto in History of Palestine, p. 226. 



330 



EASTERN LIFE. 



research will only confirm his conviction that the forms of their reli- 
gious life were substantially the same; the object being changed, and 
some needful reforms introduced. 

When Moses had failed to satisfy the people that Jehovah should 
have no meaner temple than that of the heavens and the earth, and 
when it therefore became necessary to prepare for him a visible abiding 
place, there could be no doubt about what kind of temple it must be. 
The Hebrews were living, like the Egyptians, under a theocracy; and 
the temples of Egypt, palaces for the Divine King, must be the mo- 
del. "The Israelites," says Dr. Kitto,"^ "were taught to feel that the 
tabernacle was not only the temple of Jehovah, but the palace of their 
King; that the table supplied with wine and show-bread was the royal 
table; that the altar was the place where the provisions of the monarch 
were prepared; that the priests were the royal servants, and were 
bound to attend not only to sacred but also to secular affairs, and were 
to receive, as their reward, the first tithes, which the people, as sub- 
jects, were led to consider as part of the revenue which was due to 
God, their immediate sovereign. Other things, of a less prominent 
and important nature, had reference to the same great end." 

This is not the place for going into any elaborate comparison of the 
Hebrew and Egyptian religious ritual, — interesting as the subject is to 
those who have followed the traces of the Israelites from the Nile to 
Sinai. Besides that the subject may be found fully treated in the 
writings of heathens, Jews, and Christians, it belongs less to the locality 
of Sinai than to that of Palestine, as there is no saying how little or 
how much of the ritual was ordained at first, and what 'grew up after- 
wards. As the learned have now made it clear that the Books of the 
Law were certainly not all written in their present form, for some cen- 
turies afterwards, we cannot tell how deep was the first descent into a 
ceremonial religion at Sinai, and how much was the work of a strength- 
ening priesthood in after years. Some few particulars, however, stand 
out clear, as original, and relating to the times of the abode at Sinai. — 
Among these is the setting up of the Tabernacle. 

There is no reason to suppose that the Tabernacle was the first por- 
table sanctuary ever made. The eastern idolaters of the old world 
used to carry about with them the shrines of their idols in their wan- 
derings : and the prophet Amosf and the apostle Stephen! charge the 
Israelites with having done even this. Travelers tell us that at this day 
the eastern Tartars carry about a tabernacle, which they set up for 
purposes of worship, and take to pieces again when they migrate. 
This is probably as old as any other nomade custom. Except in its 
portableness, the tabernacle of the Hebrews was as like as it could be 
made to an Egyptian temple. It had its circuit wall, represented by a 
curtained enclosure; it had its open court; and then the edifice itself, 
in the form of an oblong square. It had the two chambers which are 
the indispensable parts of all Egyptian temples, — the Holy Place; and 



* History of Palestine, p. 227. 

t Amos V. 26. J Acts VII. 43. 



MOSES AT MOUNT SIXAI. 



331 



within this, and very small, the Holy of Holies. The coverings which 
formed the ceiling and walls of these chambers were embroidered with 
figures of cherubim, as the ceilings and walls of Egyptian temples had 
sculptures and paintings of heavenly creatures. If we may take the 
description in the 1st chapter of Ezekiel as the Hebrew idea of cheru- 
bim, nothing can be more like the lion-headed, hawk-headed, ox-head- 
ed, winged images in the Egyptian sculptures. As in Egypt, the 
wood-work of the sanctuary was of the acacia (shittim wood) which, 
grows abundantly in the wadees about Sinai, as about the shores of the 
Nile ; and the overlaying of this wood with gold was an old Pharaonic 
practice. It is probable that much of the preparation was done by the 
hands of Egyptian artisans who migrated with the Hebrews. 

In the oldest Egyptian temples, before Abraham was born, the pur- 
poses and rites of the inner temple chambers were the same as in the 
Tabernacle at Sinai, and in the Jerusalem Temple, up to the day when 
its priests fled before the soldiers of Titus. Throughout all these ages, 
the Holy of Holies was in the highest sense a sanctuary. No one en- 
tered it but the most privileged of the priests, and it contained nothing 
but the symbol of the presence of the god. In the Egyptian temples, 
this symbol was the shrine ; a chest or closet, containing a sacred 
pledge, and surmounted by an idol form on its lid or top ; that idol form 
being often guarded by winged creatures, two of the wings stretching 
upwards, and two covering their bodies — as Ezekiel describes. The 
guardian hawk and ibis, and the wings of Isis Protectrix precisely re- 
semble this description ; and, indeed, the ark of the Hebrews is ex- 
actly the Egyptian shrine, with the omission of the idol figure in the 
Mercy-seat. When carried by poles on the shoulders of priests, habit- 
ed much like those of Egypt, trumpeters leading and following the 
procession, with their rams' horns at their mouths, as on occasion of 
the summons of Jericho, nothing can be imagined more like the sculp- 
ture on the walls at Medeenet Haboo, where the shrine, priests, and 
trumpeters make a part of the coronation procession. ' 

The Sacrifices offer more points of resemblance than perhaps any 
other part of the institutions of Moses. The oblations or gifts were 
the same, and the libations. The Hebrews brought cakes, meal, wa- 
fers, and wine, turtie-doves and young pigeons, exactly as we see that 
Egyptians brought them in days when no Hebrew had yet entered the 
Nile Valley. Swine were abhorred by the Egyptians as the tenements 
of evil spirits, from the earliest days. The practice of the sacrificer 
laying his hands on the head of the victim, and confessing his sins, 
thus charging the head with imprecations, is precisely what Herodotus 
relates* as the Egyptian practice ; and so is the immolation of the red 
heifer. If the Egyptian animal was not entirely red, if a single black 
or white hair was found upon it, it was rejected, because Apis was 
black, and Typho red.t The Hebrew sacrifice was to be " a red heifer, 
without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came 
yoke.":}: "In the Thebaid," says Sir G. Wilkinson, "the sheep was 



* Herod. 11. 39, f Lavcher's note on Herod. II. 39. J Numbers XIX. 2. 



332 



EASTERN LIFE. 



considered not merely as an emblem, but as the most sacred of all ani- 
mals." — " Strabo, Clemens, and many other writers, notice the sacred 
character of the sheep ; and the two former state that it was looked 
upon with the same veneration in the Saite nome as in the neighbor- 
hood of Thebes."* And such resemblances are found throughout the 
whole institution. The great point of difference is the precautionary 
arrangement of Moses that the Hebrews should have but one temple, 
and one great altar of sacrifice ; an ordinance which was afterwards 
broken through, with consequences fatal to the singleness of Hebrew 
worship. 

One particular of the Mosaic practices stands out above m.ost others 
in curiosity and importance. Magical arts and divination were forbid- 
den to the Hebrews, for a reason which is obvious enough. These 
were connected — perhaps scientifically and truly, certainly in the popu- 
lar mind — with astrology; and the permission of them would have led 
directly to the planetary worship which was, above everything, to be 
dreaded in the approach of the Hebrews to Canaan, where that wor- 
ship prevailed. But one exception was permitted. The High-priest, 
and he alone, was to have recourse to an Oracle, and to be the inter- 
preter of it. He was to ascertain the Divine pleasure by consulting 
his breast-plate — the Oracle of the Urim and Thummim. As we all 
know, this was the Sacred Oracle of the Hebrews for many centuries. 
The Scriptures cite it up to the time of David. The words Urim and 
Thummim mean "Light and Truth," or "Justice ;" and the article it- 
self is called the "breast-plate of Judgment." Now, the goddess of 
Truth or Justice in Egypt was Thmei ; and an Egyptian judge wore,t 
suspended round his neck by a gold chain, a figure of this goddess, 
studded with precious stones ; and his way of pronouncing his decision 
was by touching the successful applicant with this figure. Moreover, 
Sir G. Wilkinson presents to usi an Egyptian breast-plate containing 
the figures of the Sun (Ra), and Thmei — "Light and Truth," or "Jus- 
lice ;" — the Sun, Ra, beina: King among the gods, and the Urei§, the 
royal asps, being the symbols of majesty throughout the Egyptian sys- 
tem. 

And such as these were the forms, such as these the visible and tan- 
gible media of communication with Jehovah which here took the place 
of that direct intercourse between God and his people which !Moses 
had hoped to see established ! He had brought them to this " Mount 
of God,'' if not full of heart and hope, at least with a steady faith in 
their elevation to the simple patriarchal allegiance which had been the 
privilege of their fathers. In how different a mood he saw them de- 
part ! They came "bringing no vain oblation," but the offering, he 
trusted, of obedient and hopeful hearts. Now, he was to see them, — 
from this mountain where we stood — depart on their way to the Pro- 
mised Land — their backs bending under the burden of the sanctuary 
and sacred paraphernalia, which he well knew to have less holiness in 

* Ancient Egyptians, V. 101, 19-2. f I^^i^^- H- t ^'^i^^- ^- 

§ Suggested by Lord Prudhoe. Cited in Ancient Egyptians, II. 27, n. 



FROM SINAI TO AKABA. 



333 



them than one single aspiration to God — one single emotion of love or 
hope for Man. Away they went — by that opening to the right — the 
tribes in their order, and "the mixed multitude" following — all but 
their leader happier than when they arrived, because as much as possi- 
ble of Egyptian usage had been brought into the midst of them. For 
the sake of this, they suspended for a f'me their cry to be led back to 
Egypt, and consented to look forward, in a fitful and vacillating way, 
to the Promised Land. Perhaps the heaviest heart among all that 
number was that of the Leader, who had found that even his brother 
could turn against him. But he was still full of purpose and of faith. 
The promises of the ancestral land before them were on his lips; and 
in his secret heart he rejoiced that every step removed them further 
from Egypt. Along that track we were now to go. 



CHAPTER VL 
FROM SINAI TO AKABA. 

We w^ere now about to set forth on what might be called the most 
romantic part of our travels. Many European travelers have been to 
Sinai, returning to Suez, or to Cairo: but few have seen Akaba ; and 
yet fewer Petra. It will be remembered that Burckhardt, with ail 
his qualifications for making his way in the East, and all his earnest 
desire to accomplish his objects, failed to reach Akaba, and merely 
passed through Petra, in haste and hazard, and under the pretence of 
being a Bedoueen, under a vow to sacrifice a goat to Aaron. Knowing 
this, and being aware that the few who had visited these places had 
beheved themselves in great danger, — danger to liberty and life as well 
as property, — we scarcely expected, to the last moment, to be able to 
go to either place: and the contract with Sheikh Bishara was framed 
accordingly. It was as follows. Each camel, 150 piastres (1/. 10s.) 
from Cairo to Sinai, if we took the usual route to Suez. If we went 
by the southern route (which we did) 165 piastres per camel. If, on 
our arrival at Sinai, we found it probable that we could get to Petra 
from Akaba, Bishara was to take us on to Akaba for 100 piastres per 
camel. In case of hearing no favorable news at Sinai, Bishara was to 
take us to Nahle, on the middle route towards Palestine, for 100 pias- 
tres per camel. In case of our not falling in with an escort at Nahle, 
Bishara was to take us on yet further. In this contract, all expenses 
whatever for Bishara's camels and men were included. 

At Sinai, we found a letter, mtended for any travelers who might 
arrive, which seemed to open our way to our objects. It was from a 
gentleman with whom we had made some acquaintance at Cairo : and 
he wrote from Akaba, saying that the well-known Sheikh Hussein made 
no difficulty about taking on travelers at that time through Petra to 
Hebron : but that he would not declare his pecuniary terms. Having 
been told that our party was coining on, he would be prepared to ne- 



334 EASTERN LIFE. 

gotiate with us on our arrival. Our way was thus open to Akaba, at 
least. We should see the eastern gulf of the Red Sea, and look over 
upon the mountains of Eastern Arabia, and visit the Ezion-geber where 
Solomon built his ships for trade with Ophir, and whither our minds 
are continually brought in reading of the conflicts of the Idumeeans and 
the Hebrews, for centuries after the settlement of the latter in Palestine. 
We were really going to ilkaba, though, as Dr. Robinson observes,* 
*' Shaw and Niebuhr only heard of Akaba; Seetzen and Burckhardt 
attempted in vain to reach it; and the first Frank who visited it per- 
sonally in modern times, was Riippell, in 1822." 

Our route was not that taken by Burckhardt, Laborde, or Dr. Robin- 
son. I suppose travelers always prefer their own route to any ihey 
read or hear of: and all these gentlemen may have seen something 
which they would pity us for missing: but I own I am sorry to think 
that they never saw Wadee-el-Ain and Wadee Weteer. However, we 
had not need all go the same road. The more divergence, the better 
for the information of those at home. 

We left the convent on the morning of the 10th of March, at ten 
o'clock, and traveled till three, when we encamped in a wild place 
among shivered rocks. By the middle of the next day, we had left 
the granite, and found ourselves among sandstone, red and white. As 
I had a rough-paced camel, I walked this morning fourteen miles, in 
excessive heat. When we came to heavy sand, at two o'clock, I was 
obHged to mount. The heat here was too much for our sociability. At 
luncheon, some of the party crowded under the scanty shade of a thin 
acacia, whose thorns, strewing the ground, made the resting-place un- 
easy enough. One gentleman might be seen crouching alone, with his 
luncheon, under an angle of the rock, where there was just shade 
enough to thrust his head into. Another lay on a shelf a few feet 
above the sand, with a red handkerchief over his head, thus introduc- 
ing "a nice bit of color" into the landscape ; while I sat apart, quietly 
bearing the sunshine for the sake of a breath of air from the wadee, 
and being spared the trouble of speaking. Our encampment was de- 
lightful, after this ; in a wide water-course, among the most fantastic 
rocks of while sandstone, and surrounded by tufts of tamarisk and in- 
numerable bushes of flowering white broom. 

On the 11th, our own party were off some time before the rest : but 
after an hour's traveling through deep sand, our guide found himself at 
fault among the fantastic scattered rocks ; and we had to wait till the 
Sheikh and the rest of the party came up. They dropped into our re- 
cess from behind one group of rocks or another, till all were assembled ; 
and then Bishara himself was not sure of the way. He ran hither and 
thither among the slopes, and at last directed us over shelves, and down 
steps, and through gullies, and in and out among the glaring rocks, so 
that our wonder was, not that he was perplexed about the way, but that 
he could ever find it. We now missed the pebbly and rocky tracks 
which had hitherto served us almost all the way from Cairo, and found 



* Biblical Researches, I. 253. 



FROM SINAI TO AKABA. 



335 



how different a thing it is to travel through sand. Bat, about two 
o'clock, we turned up among granite mountains again, and found our- 
selves in a gorge, compared with whose summits, Sinai and Horeb ap- 
peared almost insignificant. Every winding disclosed something finer 
than we had yet met with; and at last we came upon a scene to which 
we remembered no parallel. We all knew Switzerland ; and we all 
agreed that not even there had we seen anything so magnificent as this 
Wadee-el-Ain, — the Valley of the Spring. Sir Frederick Henniker 
calls some of the Arabian scenery, "the Alps stripped naked." No 
description could better convey what we now saw. The whole gorge 
answered to my young imagination of the sterner parts of Greece ; and 
especially where a dribbing spring wetted the sands, and made small 
pools where fresh grass sprang, and tall slender rushes, and a few 
thick-leaved shrubs, and here and there a bushy palm. Deep shadows 
were flung across, and blazing sunshine poured down between. And 
we had time to fix in our minds the features of the scene; for the 
camels paced hither and thither, to drink at the pools which they made 
muddy for those behind. Presently, we proceeded more slowly still- 
most willingly, for we felt we could hardly linger too long. As we 
turned to the right into Wadee Weteer, we came upon a scene which 
might also be called verdant. The asphodel and other plants, which 
grew on perches and in crevices of the red rock, were of the liveliest 
green, while tamarisks spread their sprawling growth in all nooks and 
on many platforms. Not only did the camels stop to crop these tama- 
risks : their drivers were seen at every bush, and in the midst of every 
tree, gathering arms and laps full of twigs for their beasts. The white 
sand under foot, the verdure skirting the mountains, and the precipitous 
rocks, of a rich red hue, rising so as to narrow the sky, and to lessen 
the glare to a pleasant light, filled us with a delight altogether new. 
We wound along this pass for about three miles, and then encamped 
in a spot, less superb than the closer parts of the gorge, but very fine. 
It was on a platform in a nook of the pass, where the wind came freely, 
and at night blew strong. We were guarded all round by solemn bar- 
ren mountains, behind whose ridges the stars went down early. I lay 
on the sand to watch them, though warned of scorpions; for the heat 
within the tent was not to be borne till night. I observed here the 
largest locusts I ever saw; two huge, hard, black locusts, each perched 
in a bush, and not moving while it was light enough to see them. 
Some of the company amused themselves with making a bonfire at 
night, in spite of the wind, and kindly invited us to the fun; but I 
preferred the solemn steady starlight. 

The 13th was a glorious day. We made a long journey, every step 
of which was beautiful. Before six we were on our way, proceeding 
along the gorge of Wadee Weteer till ray eye was caught by a soft 
vision of I did not know what. At a distance, a line of heavenly hues 
crossed the opening of the pass, so soft in contrast with the strong lights 
and forms of the foreground, as to make me doubt for a while whether 
what I saw was earth or sky. It was the range of eastern Arabian 
mountains, as was presently shown by the little angle of deep blue sea 



336 



EASTERN LIFE. 



that came in between. We were coming down upon the Gulf of Aka- 
ba. The breeze blew cool upon our faces, and the whole company- 
grew merry. To see both shores of this Gulf of Akaba, where the 
fleets of Solomon and Jehoshaphat used to ride; to be actually gazing 
upon the farther Arabian shore, gave us a kind of new sensation of 
where we were; a truth, says my journal here, "which our daily com- 
fort rather blunts the sense of." On the shore, the wind was strong; 
and we went behind a glaring yellow rock to lunch. Our noon-tide 
rest had now stretched out from twenty minutes to an hour, on days 
when we found good shade. Sometimes I could not keep awake for a 
single minute after alighting, but fell into a state more like stupor than 
sleep, however hungry I might be — a consequence, I think, more of the 
excessive light than the heat, and more perhaps of the camel-riding 
than either. To-day, however, in the fresh wind, I was wide awake; 
and I vividly remember the pleasant hour under the rock, with chi- 
bouques and conversation. 

The remainder of the day's journey was easy — trotting over hard 
tracks on the sea-beach for about three hours. Here we might push 
on, without troubling ourselves about the baggage and the rest of the 
caravan. We could not miss our way, and there was no danger from 
Bedoueens as far as we knew, So two of us rode forward, passed the 
baggage train, and decided on our resting-place. It was where a palm 
sprang out of the sand, and some bushes growing near told of fresh 
water. Beside this palm, and close upon the sea, was our own tent 
pitched; and down I went, with Mrs. Y., to bathe, under a little thicket 
of bushes near our tent. There was nobody to threaten us with sharks ; 
the sands were soft; the water was w^arm (73°); the blue sea, with its 
white ripple, was like a lake among the surrounding high shores; and 
the sunset light was gorgeous on the double range of opposite Arabian 
mountains. The Gulf was here about fourteen miles wide. 

In the morning, we were eager to be off again along the shore ; and 
before six, when the dawn was growing into daylight on the sheeny sea, 
three of us were trotting merrily ahead of the caravan. As I looked 
back from the first promontory which turned us into the sea, I saw the 
troop scattered along the beach, and the last baggage camels pacing out 
from among the bushes about our camp. Sometimes in the bays we 
had to go slowly over fields of sand ; sometimes to cross the promontories 
by steep paths or shelves in the rocks; and oftener, to enter the water, 
guiding our camels as usual; for the water was as clear as the air. At 
last we were brought to a stop, where we agreed that there were two 
roads, if any. The promontory before us jutted out too far to make it 
prudent to take the water without guidance; and there was besides 
only a stony wadee which looked as if nobody ever had passed through 
it, or ever would. So we made our camels kneel, and waited on our 
saddles. Others who came up did the same, till we Avere a curious 
kneeling party. Bishara passed us at length, and led the way up the 
stony wadee. We little knew what we were entering upon; and if 
any one had told us that it was the pass to Wadee Negabad, the words 



FROM SINAI TO AKABA. 



337 



would have conveyed to us no more than they probably now do to my 
readers. 

The ascending wadee narrowed to a pass of steeper ascent; and the 
pass to a mere mountain road; and then, the road to a staircase — a zig- 
zag staircase of steep, irregular steps, so completely without pause that 
the great anxiety of everybody was to keep his camel going, because 
every one behind was in suspension — hanging between two steps, so 
that any stoppage must be worse than inconvenient. Many would 
have been glad to dismount, but they must not stop even for that mo- 
ment. The way was also too narrow for alighting safely. One lady 
jumped off; and then was in a great agony because her camel resisted 
being pulled forward; and there was not room for her to pass behind 
to drive it. The next in the string applied his stick to good purpose; 
so that we were relieved from our hanging attitude. During that 
minute, I could glance behind me; and most striking was the picture 
of the sandy and stony areas below, with the long-drawn caravan wind- 
ing far beneath and up the steep. Our position must have looked ter- 
rific to the hindmost. At the top, we found ourselves on a pinnacle — 
a mere point, whence the way down looked more threatening than that 
we had passed. I could not allow myself a single moment here; for the 
camels were still tail to nose all the way down ; and in the same way must 
they descend the tremendous zigzag before me. Most of the gentlemen 
contrived to slip off here, but there was no room or time for me, in 
the precise spot I occupied, to do so: so I set myself firm in my stir- 
rups, and determined to leave it to my camel how to accomplish the 
break-neck descent. Only two besides myself rode down the whole 
way; and I believe we were all surprised that every one arrived at the 
bottom in safety. There were a few slips and falls, but no harm done. 
The ridge of a camel is a great height from which to look down on, not 
only the steepest turns of sharp zigzag on the side of a precipice, but 
long slippery stone steps, in quick succession^ I depended altogether 
upon my stirrups; a pair hung short over the front peg of the saddle, 
which save the necessity of resting one's feet on the camel's neck in 
any steep descent, and are a great help in keeping one steady. I do 
not think such a pass as this could be accomplished without them; 

In the dreary scene below us we found a shady place, which yet was 
dreadfully hot. We stayed an hour, though Akaba was yet five hours 
off, and it was now half-past one. The baggage-camels and dragoman 
of our party had gone on while we rested ; so that we four must reach 
Akaba this evening, whether the rest of the caravan did so or not; and 
in the state of weariness and illness in which I was from the heat, this 
was rather formidable to think of. After four o'clock, however, the 
sun had so far declined as to become endurable. I took off my hat, and 
let the warm breeze blow in my face, and felt that I could very well 
reach Akaba. After passing the island of Graia, and before four 
o'clock, the rest of the company stopped, pitching their tents on the 
beach, and we four trotted on. By the extraordinary kindness of some 
of our companions, a tent was offered to Mrs. Y. and me, if we vvould 
22 



338 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Stop ; but we declined it, thinking an encroachment which would have 
been bold anywhere, too bad in such a place as this. 

Akaba was now in sight, — the fort and long Hne of palms, on the 
opposite shore, round the head of the Gulf. At five o'clock, it seemed 
rather further off than nearer ; and the gentlemen began to think we 
could not hold out. Mr. E. pushed on to overtake Alee and the bag- 
gage, and stop them, wherever they might happen to be. Yet, fatigued 
as I was, I felt that evening ride to be delicious. How clear the hght 
was, — showing us every object along the shore at the head of the gulf, 
as if, after sunset, the very dusk had been made transparent! There 
was Akaba, still and solitary ! — there was the group of our camels, so 
minute that we could not see them move, but only barely ghde: and 
there was Mr. E., distinguishable by his white hat, trotting fast in our 
service ! And here were we three and a camel boy, a little group al- 
most lost in the landscape, moving deliberately under the hills, with 
the clear waters undulating on our right hand, and the stars coming 
out over head. 

Alee was so near Akaba when overtaken that it was useless to stop 
him : and therefore we found, when we arrived at seven o'clock, that 
our tents were pitched among those palms we had seen for so many 
hours. We had traveled above twelve hours between breakfast and 
dinner: but Mr. E. had seats, biscuits, and bottled porter for us; and 
soon after eight we had dined, and were quite well. 

Poor Burckhardt ! what a pity it is that he could not travel round 
the head of this gulf as easily as we did ! The spot where we came 
out upon the shore after luncheon seems to have been that where he 
was turned back. Hostile Arabs lay between him and Akaba. There 
is something pathetic in his notice of this turning-point. "Under these 
circumstances, I reluctantly determined to retrace my steps, the next 
day, but, instead of proceeding by the shore, to turn off into the moun- 
tains, and return to the convent by a more western route. — Akaba was 
not far distant from the spot from whence we returned. Before sunset, 
I could distinguish a black line in the plain, where my sharp-sighted 
guides clearly saw the date-trees surrounding the castle, which bore 
N. E. I.E.: it could not be more than five or six hours distant. Be- 
fore us was a promontory called Ras Koreye," (the Graia of Laborde 
and the maps,) "and behind this, as I was told, there is another, beyond 
which begins the plain of Akaba."* — " My guides told me that in the 
sea, opposite to the above-mentioned promontory of Ras Koreye, there 
is a small island. They affirmed that they saw it distinctly ; but I 
could not, for it was already dusk when they pointed it out, and the next 
morning, a thick fog covered the gulf."t 

He was no doubt looking too far. The island of Graia was lying 
close inshore, and very near ; and its ruins must have caught his eye 
if he had not been looking out over the gulf. His guides told him that 
the infidels had put buildings upon the island, which made them call 

* Travels in Syria and tlie Holy Land, pp. 508, 509. 
t Ibid, p. 511." 



FROM SINAI TO AKABA. 



339 



it " the Convent." Laborde explored this island, crossing to it by a 
raft, which he and his companion, M. Linant, rowed with palm-branches 
for oars : and they planted the French flag on a rock, and thus took 
possession of a place which had been deserted since the fourteenth 
century. The Crusaders fortified it; and their walls remain. My 
note of its appearance on the 14th of last March is, " the island of 
Graia uprose brown from the blue waters ; — two brown eminences, 
with brown fortifications upon them." 

On our arrival at the head of the Gulf, (I think, about an hour before 
reaching our tents,) we had fallen into the great Hadj route — the broad 
trodden way by which the annual caravan proceeds to Mekkeh. As we 
rounded the head, of course we had the sea on our right hand : and on 
the left was the plain of Akaba, — the end of the great Wadee Araba 
which extends hither from the Dead Sea, and which is supposed to 
have been once the channel of the Jordan, in the days when it flowed 
uninterruptedly from its fountains in Anti-Libanus to discharge itself 
into this Gulf, before that convulsion which caused it to be lost in the 
Dead Sea. This plain looked very barren, — stretching in between ap- 
proaching lines of mountains ; and its soil is too salt, for two or three 
miles inland, to grow anything but a few stunted bushes. In the neigh- 
borhood of our tents, we observed a few inclosures ; but saw no houses 
that night. There were people in abundance, however, fifling our 
little camp, which was considered so far from safe, in the absence of 
the rest of the caravan, that no less than eight guards were appointed 
for the night. This was arranged w^ith the Governor of Akaba and that 
important personage. Sheikh Hussein, on whom so much of our fate 
w^as to depend for some weeks to come. They came just when we 
ladies had dropped asleep while waiting for our late dinner, and thus 
we missed seeing them. They had pipes and coflee in the gentlemen's 
tent, where they gave an impression of being both grasping, and in one 
another's interest. How it turned out with regard to the Sheikh, we 
shall have abundant occasion to see. 

In the morning of the 15th, we were up and in the sea before sun- 
rise ; — the clear, soft, warm sea ! How beautiful our place of encamp- 
ment was, under the palms upon the shore ! While we were dress- 
ing, we heard that two of the gentlemen had arrived, — a deputation 
from the parties behind, that no time might be lost in pursuing the 
negotiation with the Sheikh about going to Petra. When I came out 
of our tent, I found one of these gentlemen writing his journal on the 
shore — after his long ride, and before breakfast ! There he sat on the 
shingle, book on knees, ink-horn before him, a flne example of energy! 

The rest of the caravan might be seen, a little moving knot of ob- 
jects, on the opposite shore. Miss C.'s floating white veil told who they 
were. While we were at breakfast in the open air, they came up, 
heated and hungry, — glad of anything we could give them till their 
own meal could be prepared. 

After breakfast, I wrote my journal in our tent ; but found it so hot 
that when I had done, and wanted to read Laborde, I looked about for 
some shady place near, where I might have the advantage of any air 



340 



EASTERN LIFE. 



that might be stirring. I found a very small shaded nook under a wall, 
close at hand ; and there I carried camp-stool, book, and a double um- 
brella, to moderate the light. The camp-stool and my feet sank into 
the deep sand, which was yet cool: I lowered my umbrella, so as to 
shut out all objects, and there I sat, — my imagination being presently 
as much at Petra as my bodily frame was at Akaba. I was first 
startled by the flapping of something scarlet on the sand, under the 
edge of my umbrella: and amazed, indeed, I was at sight of what the 
umbrella had hidden from me. Within a yard of me sat the Council, 
smoking away in full and solemn negotiation. The scarlet belonged 
to Sheikh Hussein himself; his robe was of scarlet cloth over a striped 
crimson and yellow tunic of saiinet. He wore a prodigious shawl 
turban, lowering over his extraordinary face. At the first piercing look 
he fixed upon me, I felt that it was a face which would haunt me for 
life. He sat with his back against the wall, pouring out incessant 
clouds of smoke, and attended by his son, his pipe-bearer, and other 
vassals. Our dragoman was in waiting. In front of the Sheikh sat 
the deputation of the caravan, — three gentlemen on camp-stools, look- 
ing as excessively solemn as they could. As I found myself there, I 
thought I might as well stay; and very interesting I found the scene. — 
One spectacle which I thought exceedingly pretty throughout the East, 
was the earnestness and grace of the interpreters. Here was Alee, — 
sometimes in his eagerness, dropping on one knee, sometimes grasping 
the Sheikh's hand with his own left, while he laid down his meaning 
upon it with the right: at other times using the most vehement action, 
and then the most persuasive tones ; — now following the Sheikh's move- 
ments in unconscious imitation, and now listening with his whole soul 
to his employers' statements; — it was a charming picture: and the ne- 
gotiation this morning was of such importance that I saw the spectacle 
to perfection. 

What passed at this time was as follows: — Out of the Sheikh's thou- 
sand camels, he could not collect and select the requisite number for our 
caravan in less than seven days : and for this we were, of course, un- 
willing to wait: so he and Bishara were to take us on with nearly our 
present set to Petra in three days. Others were to meet us there, for 
the transit of the rest of the Desert to Hebron, which would occupy 
about seven days from Petra. We were to stay a few days at Petra. 
The sum demanded was 20/. a head to Hebron, including everything, — 
an insurance of ourselves and our property, baksheesh, and the tribute 
to the Sheikh at Petra. Two-thirds of the sum was to be paid at once, 
and the rest at Hebron. Alee told us that Hussein would by this make 
not more than 2/. or SI. a head, as he had to pay five sheikhs to go with 
us, guards, and the subsistence of his camels and men. We were to 
set out the next morning. 

We were warned that there might yet be a hitch: and so it proved: 
and not one, but many. I little thought ever to have witnessed the 
working of any passion in such perfection as I saw that of avarice in 
Sheikh Hussein, up to the last moment before our parting at Hebron. 
He cannot help himself now. To this passion he is a slave, every day, 



FROM SINAI TO ARAB A. 



341 



every hour. His life, his mind, his countenance are ravaged by it. The 
whole intensity of the Arab character, — an intensity which in others is 
divided among the objects and affections of their lives, — their families, 
their camels, their enemies, their religion, and their desert wilds, — is 
in him concentrated upon gain ; and a terrible spectacle it is. — Not to 
trouble the reader with all the changes which took place in the course 
of this day, when the old man returned repeatedly to the charge, to see 
what more he could get, — a circumstance which left us to the last un- 
certain whether we should reach Petra or not, — here is the contract as 
it finally stood. 

Sheikh Hussein made himself answerable for our safety, and was to 
refund the value of any propert}^ which might be lost. For the whole 
journey to Hebron, except the tribute of 100 piastres (1/.) a-head to the 
Sheikh of Petra, Hussein was to have 1000 piastres (10/.) for each 
person, and 250 piastres (21. lOs.) for each camel : the whole to be paid 
in advance, except the half of the camel money, which was to be paid 
at Hebron. To this the gentlemen adhered, through all the demands 
made by the Sheikh from day to day ; by which demands he obtained 
nothing but our disrespect and compassion. 

During this day, we looked about us as much as we could. We 
were struck here, as everywhere along the shores of the Red Sea, 
with the vast quantity of shells thrown up in shoals along the beach, — 
from the minutest to some magnificent ones, as lar^e as a man's head. 
Many varieties of little crabs were moving in all directions. Swarms 
of yellow locusts and handsome dragon-flies flitted about in the sun : 
and. little fish leaped out of the waters in great numbers. — There are 
no boats at Akaba ; but men go out fishing on small rafts. To-day the 
sea was so calm that we saw them go as far out as the eye could well 
follow them. 

In the afternoon we took a walk so far as to turn the flank of the 
palms. There were many inclosures which contained, besides thriving 
young palms, figs, pomegranates, and a prickly tree whose abundant 
fruit, now green, is said to be delicious when eaten fresh and ripe. 
We passed several water-holes and two shadoofs. There were many 
children abroad, — healthy and clean-looking, and of a free and upright 
carriage. 

We walked up to the castle, and, to our surprise, found no difficulty 
in obtaining entrance. It is a stout fortress, built for the protection 
of the Pilgrims ; with two cannon, — one on the wall, and one in the 
court. Well as the place looks outside, — really imposing, — we found 
it bare and foul within. The magazines are chambers of one story, 
built against the walls, all round the court ; and their flat roofs support 
frailer dwellings, covered with palm leaves. Besides accommodating 
the little garrison, there is thus room for the merchandize which comes 
this way, and for its guardians : but we pitied those who have to take 
up even a temporary abode in a place so squalid and dirty. We were 
thankful that we had encamped outside. — From the turret where the 
cannon is placed, we obtained a fine view, immediately after the sun 
had gone down: — the amphitheatre of mountains behind, with the area 



342 



EASTERN LIFE. 



of sand between them and us ; the palm groves between the castle and 
the sea; — the sea, like a golden lake, and the mountains retiring along 
its shores on either hand. With precisely the same natural features, 
how much quieter is this scene now than when Solomon's ship-building 
was going on ! 

Before we went to rest, — and it was late before we had the tent to 
ourselves, — the money was paid to the wide-awake Sheikh, the wearied 
gentlemen had put away their money-bags, with the hope that they 
should never again have so much ado about a bargain, and we had no- 
tice that we were to be off by eight, the next morning. So I made up 
my mind to bathe at five ; — my last sea-bath till we should come upon 
the Mediterranean at the end of our Eastern travel. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FROM AKABA TO PETRA. 

We bathed at five, and breakfasted early, as we had planned ; but 
we were far from being off at eight, as the Sheikh had promised. 
There was so much disputing among the camel-drivers as to their 
shares, and so much unwillingness on the part of some to go among a 
strange tribe, for fear of robbery and loss of camels (though the Sheikh 
guarantied to them indemnity, and two camels for every one they 
might lose), that those hours were consumed in wrangling and noise 
which we had hoped would have carried us up the first part of Wadee 
Araba before the heat of the day. The Sheikh, all in scarlet, sailed 
about, looking very dignified, and pouring out smoke like a chimney, 
wherever he moved among the palms. It was ten o'clock before we 
mounted ; and we were almost hungry again by that time, and as weary 
with the hubbub of the last four hours as with a day's journey. 

We left the inclosures of Akaba on our left hand, and the palms, 
and the exquisite blue sea, which narrowed to aline, and then was lost. 
After that, the way was dreary enough ; more so than any region we 
had yet passed through : — a sandy valley, at least two miles v.^ide, with 
high and sharp-cut mountains for boundaries on either hand. There 
was something fine, however, in the infinite desert before us, lost in 
haze and distance, and sometimes rising in an immeasurable slope 
tufted with little tamarisks and thorny acacias. 

It seemed to-day as if our desert freedom was all over. Hitherto, 
I had kept by myself as much as I pleased; and every true desert- 
traveler needs and chooses, if possible, to ride alone. With the sole 
precaution of never losing sight of the whole of the company, I had 
pushed forward, or lingered behind, or wandered away on either hand 
at my own pleasure. But to-day we found, to the great concern of 
many of us, that we were to have this liberty no longer. We were 
drilled into order like so many recruits. If two or three of us were 
riding half a quarter of a mile on either hand, the Sheikh came or sent 



FROM AKABA TO PETRA. 



343 



after us, to drive us back to the troop. This added much to the weari- 
someness of the journey; and the more because no one of us, I rather 
think, believed that there really was any danger from foes : and we did 
not yet know Hussein well enough to consider that his sins of rapacity 
might be the cause of dangers which we need not otherwise appre- 
hend. 

Hussein, his son, a fine youth of sixteen, and the inferior sheikhs, — of 
whom, I think, there were three, — careered about us on pretty, active 
little horses ; — or horses which looked small beside the camels. The 
sheikhs carried spears ; and wore something red or green about their 
dress which gave them a distinguished appearance. The escort wore 
the true desert head-covering, which our own servants adopted now in 
traveling, — the handkerchief carried, not in the form of a turban, but 
let down over the head, so that its four corners and fringes shade the 
face and neck, or float in the wind ; — the handkerchief being bound on 
the head with a rope, or a skein of yarn. We had forty armed guards, 
independently of the camel drivers. Ten of them marched in front, 
and ten at a considerable distance on either hand ; — on a rising ground, 
when there was any ; and always on the look-out. The remaining 
ten were with us, — off duty. They were of the Alaoueen tribe : — a 
much grander tribe, — much richer in camels and herds, — than that of 
our good Bishara. But O ! how much better did we like him, with 
his bright face and genial spirit, than the iron-souled great Hussein ! — 
It was so hot to-day, and we had been so early tired, that we were not 
sorry when, at half-past three, Hussein leaped from his horse, and struck 
his spear in the ground, as a signal that here we were to encamp. — It 
was in a bare and exposed place too, where our tents were pitched too 
close together to allow us any feeling of privacy. 

We v/ere now certainly on the track of the Hebrews, and should be for 
the greater part, or all of the rest of the way. It was by this wadee that 
they came down after being turned back into the wilderness from Ka- 
desh, and then refused a passage through Edom. They left Aaron 
dead on Mount Hor, and then came down by this Wadee Araba to the 
sea, to get round to the east of Idumsea. More weary than ever must 
they have been of the Desert, after having been to the very borders of 
the Promised Land, and sent back thence all this weary way into the 
waste. 

Having seen no one this day, we were permitted rather more liberty 
on the next. The sheikhs still galloped about, scouring the sandhills, 
and darting hither and thither among the bushes when we wound along 
a gully, for the sake of its scraps of shade. I must say, we looked 
rather like a company of banditti at such times, creeping along, as if in 
hiding under the covert of the shrubs, between the sandhills, — a swarthy 
savage with his matchlock peeping up, every now and then, to see if 
all was clear to the horizon. — Once or twice in the day's ride, the 
Sheikh dismounted, and took possession of the best shade ; and we 
found him, when we came up, enjoying his chibouque, with his son 
and attendants standing round him. This was a signal that we were 
to await the arrival of the last baggage camel : and I usually took ad- 



344 



EASTERN LIFE. 



vantage of the opportunity to walk on for an hour or two, though the 
heat was now so excessive that I was warned to cover my head as 
carefully as the Arabs do, and to wear a thick white cotton cap under 
inj hat, during the noon hours. The gentlemen's broad-brimmed gray 
hats were covered with white ; and they carried handkerchiefs in the 
crowns. 

To-day we had experience of the Khamsin. When the heat had 
become so intolerable that all moved forward silently in dull patience, 
— some perhaps with a secret wonder whether they should ever breathe 
easily, or feel any muscular strength again, — a strong wind sprang up 
suddenly from the south. Though it was as hot as a blast from an 
oven, and carried clouds of sand with it, I must say T felt it a great re- 
lief. I was aware that the sensation of relief could not last ; for the 
drying quality of this wind was extraordinary, and immediately felt 
upon the skin. Still, the sensations under the evaporation were those 
of relief for the moment ; and before they were over, we stopped, and 
could get under the shelter of our tents. The thirst which this wind 
caused was of course great; but we had plenty of water and oranges, 
I was surprised, after all I had read, to see how like thick fog an at- 
mosphere full of sand can be. The sand was not coarse enough to be 
felt pattering upon the face, though it accumulated in the folds of one's 
dress : but it filled the air so completely as to veil the sunshine, and to 
hide altogether the western boundary of the wadee, and all before us. 
The eastern mountains, near whose base we were traveling, rose dim 
and ghostly through this dry hot haze. We were to have proceeded to 
Wadee Gharendel, where there is a small spring and a palm or two; 
but this wind caused us to halt sooner, for the advantage of a shelter- 
ing sandhill. 

We passed Wadee Gharendel, the next morning, not more than half 
an hour from our resting-place. Its single palm, ugly in itself, looked 
well, standing as sentinel at the entrance of the narrow pass. 

My camel was insufferable to-day : and I walked many miles, pre- 
ferring thirst to having ray back broken by my uneasy and uncertain 
camel. Since leaving Akaba, we had found our camels more and more 
troublesome from their obstinacy in stooping to every twig of tamarisk 
and acacia they could get a sight of. Instead of pacing steadily on, as 
in the peninsula, they would make a rush at every bush, right or left, 
and poke down their heads, every few minutes, to crop something, — 
each poke throwing the rider into a very uneasy position. We did not 
yet know that our villainous Sheikh had brought no food for either 
camels or their drivers. He trusted to our compassion for the feeding 
of the men, and to the Desert shrubs for the subsistence of the beasts. 
On the second day, the lagging began. — And now, on the third, we 
were to have reached Petra in the afternoon: but on both evenings the 
Sheikh had stopped early, on some pretence ; and so he did this night : 
the real cause being that the camels were too weak from hunger to go 
through a proper day's journey. We were not experienced enough 
yet, however, to discover all this; and it was a week more before we 
became fully aware of Hussein's iniquity. All I knew at present was 



FROM AKABA TO PETRA. 



345 



that my camel went very uneasily, and that it was a less evil to walk 
when I could. 

The only way in which I was permitted to walk was a rather strange 
one. I must not wander in the least : and the slowness of the bag- 
gage camels was intolerable, as they grew weaker. So I used to alight 
when in the rear of the caravan which came to extend over a space of 
from half a mile to a mile. I walked forward to the first bit of shade 
I could find in advance of the troop, and sat down till all had passed ; 
and then walked forward again. This day we had left the sand, and 
were on hard ground, and amidst the glare and deep shadow of rocks. 
At two o'clock, Mount Hor became visible before us ; and to the north- 
east, a sea of mountains, among which we were to find Petra. — Some 
of the party began to be much displeased with the Sheikh when he 
stopped us before three o'clock, instead of bringing us near to Petra. 
His excuse was that we were entering among the mountains, and that 
he could not find a place for our encampment further on. He had now 
failed of his promise about distances every day: and it was clear that 
for some purpose he was protracting our journey. 

Thus far, we had seen no living creature since leaving Akaba. This, 
which appeared wonderful when we expressly reminded one another 
of it, seemed natural enough at the time. Before our Desert travel was 
done, we found how much more striking and impressive it is to en- 
counter men in the Desert, than to pass many days without seeing one. 

We had not yet been distressed for want of water ; though some of ' 
the party now began to look ruefully at what was off'ered us to drink. 
It was certainly rather reddish in color, and a good deal too warm, 
though Abasis kindly took care to hang the skin which was next to 
come into use on the shady side of his camel. 

On the morning of Friday, March 19lh, we were six hours from 
Petra: and now the least sanguine of our party began to believe that 
we really should stand within that wonderful place. I was still pos- 
sessed with the idea I always had of Petra ; — the image I had formed 
from reading Laborde and others; that Wadee Mousa was a ravine, — 
a long and narrow ravine, which was fianked and surmounted by ex- 
cavated rocks, and to which there was only the entrance. When, at 
night, I looked back upon my morning notion of Petra, it was like 
looking back from middle age to one's teens. 

We were under weigh by six o'clock, and were presently among 
passes of wild fantastic mountains. In a glen, we came upon some 
oleanders, springing vigorously, and some wild flowers. The ground 
was damp in patches, and there was dew upon the weeds. Never be- 
fore did dewdrops look so bright to us. The rocks here were in tower- 
ing masses, appearing distinct from each other, and most fantastic in 
their colors and surfaces. I should not have believed that any purely 
natural tinting could have been too bright for the eye of the lover of na- 
ture ; but here, the coloring of the rocks is distressingly gaudy. The 
veining of the surface is singular. Every one cried out " Mahogany !" 
and the veining is like that of mahogany: but the colors of this veining 
are like nothing to be seen anywhere else: — scarlet, maroon, sky-blue, 



346 



EASTERN LIFE. 



white, lilac, black, gray, and green ! A stain of sky-blue and gray 
winds away in a ground of crimson ; and a ribbon of scarlet and wliite 
in a ground of lilac ; and so on. The stone is extremely friable, so 
that the mere rubbing with the finger end turns it into dust. The cor- 
rosion of the surface of the rocks by time and weather has so much the 
appearance of architectural intention, that it is at first difficult in Petra 
itself to distinguish the worn from the chiseled face of the precipices : 
and while approaching Petra, one seems to be perceiving the rudiments 
of the wonders of the place to come. 

Alternating with these towering precipices, and at times surmounting 
them, are rounded eminences which look like downs, both from their 
forms and the greenish hue which is spread over them by their being 
strewn with the spines of the tamarisk. Tufted with blackish shrubs, 
they are not beautiful; but no characteristic of this singular scenery is 
more distinctive than the contrast between the gaudy precipices and the 
pale mountains behind. At the summit of the first steep and slippery 
pass, we looked abroad upon a noble view, of the billowy sea of moun- 
tains round about us, the partially sunned Desert stretching to the 
horizon, the sinuous and tufted wadees looking like desert paths among 
the sandhills and nearer rocks, and our camel train winding for a mile 
back among the pass and recesses below. We felt ourselves really 
now among the haunts of Esau and his tribe, and of the children of 
Ishmael, whose hand was against every one, as every one's hand was 
against them. And when, a little further on, we stopped in a hollow 
of the hills to rest, it was strange to remember who came here in later 
days, and what an extraordinary depot this was for the merchandize of 
the East, for a course of centuries. Up this pass came long trains of 
camels, laden with the silks, muslins, spices and ivory of India, and 
the pearls of Arabia, and amber, gold and apes from Abyssinia, and all 
the fine things that the luxury of Europe derived from the far East. 
These all came through Petra, and were lodged there for rest, and for 
no litde traffic, as in a place wholly inaccessible by any foe. The 
eagle might pounce upon the kid among the areas of Petra ; and the 
lightnings might dart down from the summits. But no human enemy 
could enter to steal, or arrow from human hand to destroy. Up this 
pass then had wound many a caravan laden with oriental wealth ; and 
in this hollow had rested perhaps many a company in ambush, and no 
doubt many a baffled foe. Those single trees, perched on fantastic 
heights, were some of them old enough to have been living in those 
days, landmarks to the traveler, and signal stations to the desert war- 
rior. 

Then our path — our very narrow path, lay over these whitish hills, 
now up, now down; and then again we were slipping or jerking down 
slopes or steps of gaudy rock. About eleven o'clock, I saw the first 
excavation, — a square door-way in a pile of white rock on the right 
hand. Finding that we were not to arrive by the entrance which La- 
borde declares to be the only one, — the Sik, — I determined not to dis- 
mount, in order to ascertain whether there really was more than one 
entrance practicable for beasts of burden. I entered Petra first, (after 



FROM AKABA TO PETRA. 



the guide,) and can testify to the practicable character of this entrance, 
as I did not alight till we reached the platform above the water-course. 

Petra might be said to begin from that first excavation. For nearly 
an hour longer we were descending the pass, seeing first, hints at fa- 
cades, and then, more and more holes clearly artificial. Now red pop- 
pies and scarlet anemones and wild oats began to show themselves in 
corners where there was a deposit of earth ; yet the rocks became 
more and more wild and stupendous, while, wherever they presented a 
face, there were pediments and pilasters, and ranges of door-ways, and 
little flights of steps scattered over the slopes. A pair of eagles sprang 
out, and sailed over head, scared by the noise of the strangers ; and 
little birds flew abroad from their holes, sprinkling their small shadows 
over the sunny precipices. Nothing gave me such an idea of the vast- 
ness of the scale of everything here as those little birds and their sha- 
dows. What a life it must have been, — that of the men of old who 
gathered their comforts about them in such homes as these, and led their 
daily course among these streets and areas of Nature's making, where 
the echoes, still busy as ever, mingled the voices of men with the 
scream of the eagle and the gush of the torrent! What a mixture of 
wild romance with the daily life of a city! It was now like Jinnee 
land ; and it seemed as if men were too small ever to have lived here. 
Down we went, and still down, among new wonders, long after I had 
begun to feel that this far transcended all I had ever imagined. On the 
right hand now stood a column, standing alone among the ruins of 
many, while on the left were yet more portals in the precipice, so high 
up that it was inconceivable how they were ever reached. The longer 
we stayed, and the more mountain temples we climbed to, the more I felt 
that the inhabitants, among their other peculiarities, must have been 
winged. At length, we came down upon the platform above the bed 
of the torrent, near which stands the only edifice in Petra. 

This platform was sheltered on two sides by rocks ; and as my eye 
became accustomed to the confusion, I could make out, among the 
masses of building stones which lay between it and the empty water- 
course below, the lines of five terraces, and, at last, the piers of many 
bridges. This platform was thickly grown over with some plant of 
the lily kind ; — we think, the red amaryllis, which must richly adorn 
the area when in blossom. Our servants pitched our tents here, in 
opposition to the Sheikh, who would have had us take up our abode 
in the caves, to save the expense of watchers. We much preferred, 
however, the cleanliness and airiness of our tents, and the lily carpet 
which pushed its leaves under their curtains, and stretched under our 
beds. The first thing Alee showed us was a scorpion, which he 
brought with the tongs from our tent, — a hideous, yellow, venomous- 
looking creature, about two inches long. Two more were found in 
another tent. 

We were seriously desired not to move a step from our platform 
without guards and companions; and we had quite enough to look at 
for the present in the faces of the extrordinary precipices which walled 
us in. I spread my cloak on a rocky shelf, where I could quietly 



348 



EASTERN LIFE. 



overlook the preparations for our abode of some days in this place 
which I had never hoped to reach. I did not laugh now when Mr. Y 
said to me, " Well, how do you like being at Petra ?" 



CHAPTER VIII. 
PETRA, 

We lost no time in beginning our researches. We were to be here 
at least three days; but we were as impatient to look about us as if we 
must merely pass through, as poor Burckhardt did. The first thing I 
did was to ascertain the direction of the stream, in order to understand 
Laborde's plan : for he gives no compass points. Having done this, 
and examined our platform and what I could see from it, I was pre- 
sently clear as to the following particulars. 

The site of Petra is not a ravine, as we had been wont to suppose ; 
but a considerable basin, completely closed in by rocks ; sufficiently 
ventilated, however, by the chasms and defiles left in the precipices. 
The area is of undulating ground, there being scarcely a level spot any- 
where, beyond our platform. 

The stream, dry except in winter, must have been a considerable 
river in former times — for depth, though not for width. At present, it 
is either a fitful brook, flowing shallow over white sand, and among 
bushes and weeds ; or it is a rushing torrent, which presently spends 
its force, and leaves the channel dry. As I said before, the channel was 
dry when we were there. In old times, its depth was considerable, as is 
shown by the remains of the embankments, and piers of the bridges : and 
there can be little doubt of its constant flow in those times. At present, 
the stream is diverted, some way above, to irrigate a fertile district, 
leaving the torrent dependent on the rains on the nearer mountain. 

It seemed clear to me that the whole of the rising ground, on each 
bank of the river, as high on our side as the single standing pillar, was 
formerly terraced. I believe I traced five terraces on our side ; and 
there may have been a good many more. Some large building, with a 
colonnade towards the river, stood on our platform. The bases of many 
columns are visible; and others lie shattered, with their fragments dis- 
posed in the order in which they fell. The quantity of building stones 
lying heaped on both banks is greater than can be described or esti- 
mated. 

The only remaining edifice in Petra is that called Pharaoh's Palace ; 
— a rather vulgar building, Roman in its style, and adorned with stucco 
garlands. It is cracked and mouldering, and will not last long. It was 
very near our platform. AVe may consider as belonging to it a Tri- 
umphal Arch standing between it and our tents. These are all in the 
way of buildings. But it was immediately clear to me that litde is re- 
maining also of the rock-abodes, in comparison with what once existed. 
I think that travelers have not only much underrated the number of 



PETRA. 



349 



rock -dwellers, but failed to perceive that what remain are the mere 
debris of what the precipices once presented to view. An observant 
eye may detect remnants of stucco ornaments very high up many rocks, 
and in great numbers. Again, many of the excavations are so difficult 
to reach, and some are such mere walls or surfaces, that it appears as 
if the whole front of the rock, to a considerable depth, had fallen : and 
in these places there was usually that extraordinary gaudiness of color- 
ing which marks the more friable portions of the rock; — that is, those 
portions where, exposure to the air having begun, the oxide of iron in 
the rock carries on the decomposition. In these places, a finger end 
will bring down whole handfuls of sand. Where the rock is dun-co- 
lored, the surface is usually well hardened. Again, the conduits, cis- 
terns, and flights of steps scattered over the rocks and among the preci- 
pices indicate a larger number of rock dwellings than remain now — 
very great as that number is. 

And how very great it is ! I began with a notion that I should like 
to count them; having read that they were about two hundred. With 
this two hundred running in my head (as one never gets over believing 
what one reads) I continued for some days to think of these rock-abodes as 
computable by hundreds, till I was startled by hearing one of the gentle- 
men wonder how many thousands there were. We were sitting on a rock 
at the moment : and as he pointed up two or three ravines, counting the 
holes in a single rock face, and reminded me how small a proportion 
these bore to the whole, I was indeed astonished. I could not admit 
the full extent of the marvel at the moment : but I soon saw that he was 
right. Dr. Robinson says,* "The most striking feature of the place 
consists, not in the fact that there are occasional excavations, and sculp- 
tures like those above described; but in the innumerable multitude of 
such excavations, along the whole extent of perpendicular rocks adja- 
cent to the main area, and in the lateral valleys and chasms ; the en- 
trances of very many of which are variously, richly, and often fantasti- 
cally decorated, with every imaginable order and style of architecture. 
The clifl's upon the east and west present the largest and most continuous 
surfaces; and here the tombs are most numerous. But the spur from 
the eastern cliffs ... as well as other smaller spurs and promontories, 
and single groups of rocks, both in the north and south, are also occupied 
in like manner. All these sepulchres, of course, looked down upon the 
city of the living ; but others again are found in retired dells and secret 
chasms, or sometimes among the heights on either side, to which flights 
of steps cut in the rock lead up in several places." Dr. Robinson's 
conclusion that these excavations were all tombs, except the few which, 
might have been temples, appeared to us on the spot very extraordinary. 
Elsewhere, rock tombs are, or have been, sealed up — contain, or have 
contained, dead bodies, and may be counted by dozens to a large city, 
each containing many bodies. Here, they are standing wide open ; no 
dead body (except of a modern Arab or two) has ever been found in 
them, and they exceed any number of houses that the area of the city 



* Biblical Researches, II. 529. 



350 



EASTERN LIFE. 



can ever have contained. To these considerations we may add that it 
is the common practice of the Arab tribes of the desert to live in caves; 
and all their modes of living appear to be aboriginal : and that the scrip- 
tural expressions relating to such districts as this speak of habitations as 
well as sepulchres. Isaiah speaks of one " that graveth an habitation 
for himself in a rock:"* and Jeremiah exclaims " Thy terribleness hath 
deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dweliest in the 
clefts of the rock, that boldest the height of the hill : though thou 
shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down 
from thence, saith the Lord."t Obadiah, again, declares his message 
to be "concerning Edom," when he says, "The pride of thine heart 
hath deceived thee, thou that dweliest in the cleft of the rock, whose 
habitation is high; that saith in his heart, 'Who shall bring me down 
to the ground?' Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though 
thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith 
the Lord."! "There shall not be any remaining of the house of 
Esau," the prophet goes on to say : and mournful indeed is the vacuity 
now. Every deserted place is mournful enough ; — a grass-grown farm 
house in Ireland ; a city buried under mounds in Egypt: but nowhere 
else is there desolation like that of Petra, where these rock door-ways 
stand wide — still fit for the habitation of a multitude, but all empty, and 
silent, except for the multiplied echo of the cry of the eagle, or the bleat 
of the kid. No — these excavations never were all tombs. In the 
morning the sons of Esau came out in the first sunshine to worship at 
their doors, before going forth, proud as their neighbor eagles, to the 
chase : and at night, the yellow fires lighted up from within, tier above 
tier, the face of the precipice. 

One other feature which immediately struck us, as it must every ob- 
server, was the bad style of art wherever any facades remain. The 
grandeur of the place is not, to my eyes, at all from the ornament 
wrought in the rock, or stuck upon it, but altogether from its adoption 
as an abode by the ancient tribes of the Desert, and their adaptation of 
such a fastness to their purposes. There is a strong taint of colonial 
vulgarity in all the Roman work ; and in looking at it, our wonder was 
something very different from admiration. 

Such were the cursory observations we could make from our plat- 
form. But we soon went further. As soon as we had lunched, and 
collected a few of our armed Arabs as a guard, we set out in a body to 
make a general survey, in preparation for further research to-morrow. 
We turned off our platform at the right-hand (north-eastern) corner 
above the stream, and descended into the valley which is overhung by the 
Corinthian Tomb, as it is called, and other conspicuous excavations. The 
water-course and lower grounds in this valley were thickly grown with 
oleanders, all the way. — We passed the Theatre, the so-called Egyp- 
tian tombs, and a large number of unmarked excavations, pausing no- 
where till we came to the Khasne. 

Burckhardt calls this temple§ "one of the most elegant remains of 

* Isaiah XXII. IG. t Jeremiah XLIX. 16. $ Obadiah 4. 

§ Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 424. 



PETRA. 



351 



antiquity existing in Syria:" and other travelers have spoken raptu- 
rously of it. I think much of the charm must be owing to their hav- 
ing come suddenly upon it from the defile of the Sik, after an anxious 
and toilsome Desert journey, when every work of art, in a shady place, 
and among thickets of oleanders, would appear beautiful. Its posi- 
tion is wonderfully fine ; and its material and preservation very strik- 
ing: but it is inconceivable how any one can praise its architecture. 
This temple, called by the Arabs " Pharaoh's Treasury," is absolutely 
set in a niche. It stands in a cupboard, seeming to be made to fit it 
exacdy. When I speak of its situation being wonderfully fine, I do 
not refer to this feature of it, which is good merely because it is una- 
voidable, — there being no space in which a building could be placed in 
these ravines. This peculiarity, — of a facade in a niche — is imposing 
in its place : but the beauty of its position lies in its being at the meet- 
ing point of two ravines, so that the Khasne suddenly confronts the 
traveler who arrives by way of the Sik. The material is a pale rose- 
colored stone, which is shown olf most delicately by the dark shrubs 
which grow before it. 

The height of the entire facade is between sixty and seventy feet. 
Of the six columns, one has fallen ; and the bases and capitals of others 
are somewhat corroded. Above, there is an uninterrupted pediment, 
between whose halves stands an "insulated cylinder," as Burckhardt 
calls it ; a sort of miniature temple, crowned with the urn which the 
Arabs believe to contain Pharaoh's treasure. They cannot bring them- 
selves to pass it without a shot; and every man of them, unless pre- 
vented, pops away at the urn, in hope of bringing down some of the 
gold from the inside. There are elaborate carvings of garlands, &c., 
and many defaced bas-reliefs. From what remains of these, we judg- 
ed them to have been bad. — The interior has nothing to show but 
handsome space, the principal chamber being sixteen paces square, and 
about twenty-five feet high. — A few broad steps lead to the portico, on 
either hand of which is an ornamented door, leading to an empty side- 
chamber. There is nothing in the main chamber : throughout the 
whole building, no niche, or pit, or other sign of the place having been 
put to any use. There are two small hollows, in which we fancied 
we saw uncertain traces of bas-reliefs : but the place is obviously un- 
finished. There are no door-posts ; and the walls within are merely 
chiseled, and left rough. — In the near neighborhood of this temple, I 
saw several flights of steps, wandering away up the precipices. We 
went but a few yards along the Sik, as we were to explore it fully to- 
morrow; so we returned first to the Theatre. 

The Theatre ! — in the place where Esau and his tribe came to live 
beside the eagles ! Here it was, however ; its ranges of semi-circular 
seats cut out of the rock. Its area is supported by massive masonry, 
and not so encumbered with debris and vegetation as to prevent our 
easily reaching the seats. I climbed to the top, in order to enter some 
of the excavations ranged above, — at a great height. I found them 
mere square cut, empty rock-chambers. 

When on the top range of the seats of tke theatre, I called one or 



352 



EASTERN LIFE. 



two of my companions to witness the inaccuracy of the view from this 
point, given by Laborde. We were on the precise spot whence the 
sketch was taken, as was shown by a number of neighboring objects. 
It was the distance that was in fault. Before us rose a lofty barrier of 
rock which, of course, closed in the view : but in Laborde we have, in 
place of this rock, a fine retiring distance, and long perspective of fa- 
cades, and a spacious valley with a meandering river, such as was 
never yet seen in Petra. It is a serious matter giving false impres- 
sions of a place at once so remarkable and so little visited as this. In 
marking, in his plan, the Sik as " the only entrance to the town," La- 
borde may have followed Diodorus, who says there was but one way 
in, and that artificial : though he should not have repeated this without 
verifying it : but the elaborate view, with its non-existent valley and 
stream, is a gi'atuitous piece of misleading, for which I see no excuse. 

The effect is fine of the lofty rock springing straight up from the 
back range of seats. Shallower steps than the seats run up the mid- 
dle. This theatre is supposed to have seated about three thousand 
people. 

We next crossed the defile, and climbed to the extraordinary exca- 
vation whose platform is supported by ranges of arches in solid mason- 
ry. The obtaining a platform was clearly the object here; and prodi- 
gious labor it has cost, in tier over tier of stone arches. Several of 
these are entire and visible, among the heaped ruins of others. The 
platform supports lateral colonnades, — the only lateral colonnades here. 
Above these colonnades were deep square holes, which indicated ex- 
cavations on a second story behind. At least, we supposed so ; and 
there were clearly upper chambers in the central portion of this tem- 
ple : above these, above cornices, and pediment, and at a vast height, 
was the crowning urn. The central chamber is very large, and not 
less than forty feet high. Its walls are like those of the Khasne, merely 
chiseled : and it contains nothing but the little partition walls which 
the modern Arabs have built up of loose stones. The walls were gay 
with the purple, red, and gray streaks which Dr. Robinson compares 
to " watered silk," — as our companions did to mahogany. 

While we were here, a series of strange wild heads popped up from 
below the platform, — showing that the ragged regiment of the Sheikh 
of Petra was upon us. Suleiman, Sheikh of Wadee Mousa, and of the 
tribe Aulad Benee Israel, was here in person. His followers were a 
dark and wild-looking set of fellows, with their ready match-locks, 
daggers and spears, as could be seen : but they never did us any harm, 
nor ofi^'ered any. The Sheikh came to demand his fee of IOC piastres 
per head, for our entrance into Petra and abode there: and this being 
immediately paid, he was thankful and quiet. How difl'erent a state 
of things from that which existed so lately as the visits of Burckhardt, 
and Captains Irby and Mangles ! 

This evening, our friend Hussein suddenly remembered that he had 
forgotten two things. He had shown himself very expert, from day to 
day, in so visiting the tents, and making demands of the dragomen, as 
to obtain his coffee and tobacco from our company, and charcoal and 



PETRA. 



353 



et ceteras from the servants. He now went the round to declare that 
he had forgotten to say that he must liave a robe (no trifle!) from each 
tent, and a sheep from each individual of the company : — ten robes, 
and fifteen sheep. He got nothing by remembering this at last. 

It had been cool weather all day : and this evening and night, it was 
so chilly that we sat in our cloaks, and slept ill from cold. — Our good 
Bishara came to bid us farewell, and would not be satisfied without re- 
peatedly kissing all the gentlemen. One, who was stooping over his 
writing, offered the top of his tarboosh for the salute, but was not al- 
lowed to escape so. As for us ladies, we gave our hands to be kissed 
with hearty good will; for we esteemed the worthy fellow, and were 
sorry to part. — In the morning, he was still there; but after we went 
forth to the Sik, we saw him no more. 

We were to have set forth at half-past seven : but we were detained 
an hour by the disputes among the Arabs about the division of their 
money. — As far as the Khasne, we went over the same ground as yes- 
terday : and then we entered the Sik, — the most extraordinary entrance 
to a capital city, from its indomitable wildness, that was probably ever 
seen. This main street of Petra is about two miles long. Its width 
varies from ten to thirty feet; and it is enclosed between perpendicular 
rocks which spring to a height of from one hundred to seven hundred 
feet. These are singular conditions of a main street. It is paved and 
drained, but badly lighted, for the rocks so nearly meet as to leave, 
really and truly, only that " strip of sky" which one often reads of, 
but which I never remember to have before seen, except in being drawn 
up out of a coal-pit. Captain Mangles speaks of the sky being com- 
pletely hidden in places by the overlapping rocks above: but this 
escaped my observation. The dimness, however, at the bottom of 
this chink, where we were forcing our way among the tamarisks, wild 
figs, and oleanders, was memorable enough. — The pavement is of large 
slippery stones, worn in places into ruts by ancient chariot wheels. A 
conduit runs along, and a little above, the wayside, — a channel hol- 
lowed in the rock : and in parts there are, at the height of thirty feet, 
earthen pipes for the conveyance of water. On the face of the preci- 
pices, sometimes upright as a wall for three hundred feet, are curious 
marks left by more ancient men than those who paved the street, and 
laid the water pipes: — shallow niches, and the outlines and first cut- 
tings of pediments ; and tablets begun and discontinued. On looking 
up, one sees a solitary tree, bending over the ravine from a height 
which makes a mere bush of it. In the fissures of the rock spring 
brambles, the bright green caper plant, and fig trees with translucent 
young leaves, and roots and stems which accommodate themselves to 
the crevices by inconceivable twists. Down the water-drips hang 
bunches and strings of delicate ferns; and round the smooth curve of 
some protruding rock lies an ivy garland, pushed forth from the recess 
behind which is curtained with it. The homely mallow, the wild ge- 
ranium and red poppy, spring in corners where there is a deposit of 
earth, and skirt much of the way; and the pale blue forget-me-not lurks 
in the hollows under the shrubs where there was lately a pool. On 
23 



354 



EASTERN LIFE. 



ledges above one's head are heaped stones in such quantities as show 
how fiercely the torrent drives through this pass after the winter rains : 
a liability which was, of course, guarded against when this was a capi- 
tal city. 

In the proudest of those days, there must have been an indomitable 
wildness in this main avenue; — almost as much as now; — almost as 
much when the commerce and the pleasure of the city passed through 
it, — on the backs of camels from the East, or in chariots from Rome, — 
as now when a party from far England was stumbling among its debris, 
full of wonder and baffled speculation. The sharp lights and deep 
shadows must have been the same then as now ; and the gay hues of 
the rocks. Were the sky-high trees and rock-weeds there? and the 
eagle spreading his wings on his eyrie, as I saw them to-day? And 
did the small birds roost in the holes of the precipice, and speckle it 
with their shadows as they flew ? And did the singing bird, — war- 
bling to-day like the nightingale of the place, — find a natural perch 
within the city gates? How strange must have been the strong echoes 
of city noises in this gorge ? — the cry of the camel drivers, the rattle of 
chariots, the common talk and laugh of citizens, and the play of chil- 
dren ! And what different people must have been met there from the 
few we saw to-day ! Instead of eastern merchants and Roman soldiers, 
and a Greek traveler or two, I saw to-day a group of goats and their 
herdsmen, entering into the deepest shadow from a reach of sunshine ; 
and a child standing with two kids on a point of rock above my head; 
and a wild troop of shaggy Arabs, clattering their arms as I passed ; 
and here and there a solitary figure, with his matchlock, brown tunic, 
and white teeth, perched on a pinnacle, or striding over a distant slope. 
— These features of wildness carried me back far beyond the Roman 
and Greek times; back to the days when the children of Ishmael and 
Isaac married, and settled their posterity here. Further back than 
this we cannot go ; for we know nothing of the Horiins who were 
driven out from hence by Esau. But Esau, and his wife, the daugh- 
ter of Ishmael, and her brother Nebajoth, and his descendants the Na- 
bathaeans were probably not unlike the wild Arab goat-herds and 
hunters we met to-day, except that they carried bows instead of match- 
locks. Their other arms, their dress, face, and form were probably 
much the same as we saw. We had only to fancy them multiplied 
and inhabiting the holes in the rock; and we might put the last three 
thousand years of the world's history out of sight. 

After exploring above a mile and a half of this winding defile, we 
came to a narrow part where an arch springs from side to side at a 
great height; an arch whose purpose is unknown, as it appears im- 
possible to ascend to it. It is too narrow to have been a bridge, and too 
steep to have been an aqueduct. This arch is the most striking object 
in Petra to a hasty observer; and almost every modern traveler before 
ourselves was necessarily a hasty observer. Such a city-gate was pro- 
bably nowhere else ever seen. Beneath the arch, on either side, is an 
empty niche, and pilasters much defaced; and on the eastern side is a 
second, smaller niche. A little further on is the entrance to the pass, 



PETRA. 



359 



—-a sharp-cut passage between perpendicular rocks. A little thicket 
of wild figs and oleanders nearly shrouds the entrance : beyond which 
rises, on the opposite side of a small area, a massive wall of masonry, 
supporting a platform, on which might have stood a fort. Here the 
excavations again begin to abound; and for about a mile, we had all 
about us white rocks, squared into towers, hollow^ed into vaults, and 
cut out into abodes and baths consisting of many chambers, and adorned 
with pediments, and in one instance, with four small pyramids springing 
from the architrave. The rock chambers which are crowned with 
these pyramids appeared to us to be baths ; at least, the lower series ; 
for there are two stories. The lower stories have to be reached by a 
clamber, far from easy, to the base of a flight of wide shallow steps, 
cut in a rock too smooth to afford a footing otherwise. In the principal 
lower chamber is a deewan extending round three sides, and ascended 
by two steps at each extremity. From a lateral chamber, there is a 
window looking into a dark apartment, so full of little pits as to re- 
semble the working vats in a brewery. Travelers have hitherto sup- 
posed these to be graves; but we thought them more likely to be baths. 
The encroachments of nature upon these by-places of art are curious 
to observe. In one chamber near, I remarked a vigorous nightshade 
growing ; and from a deep pit sprang a large fig-tree, covered with 
green fruit, which was still climbing to the light. In another chamber, 
a leafing thorn was the only inhabitant. In every lateral defile of this 
suburb of Petra, (as we may call it,) that I entered, there were more, 
and still more, excavations — aristocratic abodes for the living or the 
dead, retired into aristocratic retreats. There they were, in fissures 
and corners, just disclosed behind the green thickets! 

I saw here, in the outskirts, a substantially built drain, first deep cut 
in a slope of rock, and then well built with thick sides, and now choked 
up with dust and rubbish. And afterwards I observed what appeared 
from below to be gutters and spouts, brought across the rocks at the 
height of the pinnacles of the loftiest temples, and down their sides, 
as if to carry off from the excavations the waters which would other- 
wise stream down upon them after the rains. 

When we came home to rest at noon, we were told that the clergy- 
man who had made a great point of being at Jerusalem for Palm Sun- 
day, would waive his wish, in order not to hurry the rest of the party 
from Petra. We were all much obliged to him ; and he was himself 
well satisfied afterwards, when a further knowledge of our Sheikh 
and his ways, proved that we could not have reached Jerusalem in 
the time proposed. 

Our further exploration to-day was near home. We examined the 
Triumphal Arch and Pharaoh's Palace — the only edifices in Petra, as 
1 have said. They are not worth many words — being Roman, and in 
a bad style — the ornanjental work of the palace being in stucco, and 
very florid. At the back, the stucco is carried up to successive stone 
projections, which form tiers of cornices, in which we saw nothing of 
purpose or beauty. By the marks on the walls within, the whole in- 
terior seems to have been covered with stucco, little of which, how- 



356 



EASTERN LIFE. 



ever, remains. One curious circumstance is, that the arch of a recess 
in the innermost chamber has been built through to the back. This, 
and the lateral chambers, had a second story ; whereas the vestibule 
appears to have sprung to the roof. 

We now observed scf many piers and otherwise unaccountable pro- 
jections in the embankments of the water-course, as to make us sup- 
pose the river to have been covered in — the whole water-course vaulted. 

While here, my eye was caught by an appearance of large gratings 
in the face of the western rocks ; and we climbed up a rough and 
steep slope to examine them. They remain wholly mysterious to us 
all. Small, shallow, irregular holes are cut in the rock at such dis- 
tances as to leave a tolerably regular grating; and many of these holes 
— so many as to indicate that all were formerly thus treated — are filled 
up with stones, of a different grain from the rock, cemented in, so as 
to form a rough surface. The only conjecture I could form is not a 
very probable one — that this was done to procure a reliable surface to 
work upon — to be afterwards covered with stucco — the rock being here 
extremely friable. High up on this western face was what the gentle- 
men unanimously declared to be an inscription — but it was impossible 
to get nearer to it, to make out the character. Speaking of inscriptions, 
1 fear we all overlooked one Captain Mangles tells of, on a tablet under 
a pediment of one of the temples, the character of which, Mr. Bankes 
declared, and proved by comparison with his notes, to be precisely the 
same with that of the mysterious inscriptions in Wadee Mokatteb, and 
round the base of Horeb. This is an observation of so much import- 
ance, that we must hope the next European who visits Petra will look 
for this tablet, and bring home a copy of its character. In a cave fur- 
ther north than the western precipice, I found the base of a column; 
but, as there was none to answer to it, nor any trace of others within 
the caverns, this was pronounced to have been placed there by some 
" accident." 

The Sheikh was troublesome this evening about our not going on, 
though he had said at Akaba that we might stay a month at Petra, if 
we liked. We were informed that our bread and ale were all con- 
sumed; and that the water was half an hour off, so that we had to pay- 
two piastres for every skin that was brought. We were provided with 
biscuits and a litde porter ; so we did not think of moving the sooner 
for the bad news. 

On Sunday, the 21st, after service, we set off for the temple of El 
Deir. In describing the view from the summit of Mount Hor, Captain 
Mangles says,* "In the midst of this chaos of rocks, there rises into 
sight one finished work, distinguished by profuseness of ornament, and 
richness of detail. It is the same which has been described as visible 
from other elevated points, but which we were never able to arrive at. 
It bears N.E. half N. from this spot; but the number and intricacy 
of the valleys and ravines which we hoped might have led us to it, 
baffled all our attempts. No guide was to be found. With the assist- 



Travels in Egypt, &c., Chap. VIII. 



PETRA. 



357 



ance of the glass, we made out the facade to be larger, to all appear- 
ance, than that of the temple at the eastern approach," (the Khasne,) 
"and nowise inferior to it in richness and beauty." We were for- 
tunate enough to reach this temple; and when we afterwards saw it, as 
Captain Mangles did, from Mount Hor, we could well imagine how 
tantalizing it must be to a stranger to see it in no other way. 

The ascent to it was formerly by a staircase winding up the moun- 
tain to the height of 1500 feet. We reached the foot of this staircase 
by turning in among the oleander thickets, past Pharaoh's Palace, and 
pursuing the northern ravine. We found the steps much worn away; 
and we had to climb over many a slope of slippery rock : but it was 
still a magnificent avenue to a temple. It is well that there was no 
question of material in the case : to get the workmen up there must 
have been quite enough. The little flights of steps cut for the work- 
men's sake, to raise them to the summit of their work, had a singular 
effect ; and these seemed to throw light on the purpose of other short 
and odd staircases, twisting hither and thither among other precipices. 
I think no one feature of the region struck me so much. 

The faf^ade is a good deal like that of the Khasne ; but El Deir is 
even more unfinished. There is some preparation for wings, which 
were never cut. There are disks where garlands were to be sculp- 
tured ; and pedestals, without statues or urns, and niches left empty. 
Some of the party thought the capitals of the pillars were only half 
sculptured: but I am not sure that they were not meant to remain as 
they are,— a clumsy approach to the Ionic. There was a curious 
mixture of what we must suppose to be the native architecture with 
the Roman ; and the result is not at all beautiful. There is only one 
chamber, which measures about forty-five by forty feet, and is nearly 
forty feet high. It has an arched recess opposite the entrance; and the 
stone mouldings of this arch were fastened on, and not chiseled out of 
the rock. Some of these mouldings remain, and show how they came 
there. We saw many instances of this attachment of stone decora- 
tions; and everywhere, holes for the pins which had fastened them on. 

From the fine area in front of this temple, we climbed to another, 
higher still, with nothing to remark upon in it, but a niche whose frame- 
work was elaborately ornamented. Even here, on this pinnacle in the 
deserts of Iduma^a, we encountered the eye-sore of travelers' names! 
Many were scribbled on the compartments of carved stone in this ex- 
cavation. — On the platform before the entrance, we found the bases of 
many columns. A colonnade on this high perch must have had a sin- 
gular, and perhaps a very fine efTect. 

We mounted one stage more;- — to the summit over the top of this 
temple: and thence we had a magnificent view. El Deir was just 
below, a yellow temple completely niched in red rocks. Its area, 
growm over thick with lilies, looked well: but there was a more re- 
markable one near, — at a rather higher elevation, whose circle of hewn 
stones and shrubs indicated very clearly that here had been a circus. 
How was this possible, unless, as I was sometimes driven to suppose, 
the people had wings ? Fluted columns, covered thickly with cement, 



35S 



EASTERN LIFE. 



lay in fragments beside the circle of stones. — North and east rose the 
red rocks which form the material and barrier of the city on that side; 
and above them swelled the round, whitish mountains which shut in 
the whole. Then the view was bounded by rocks, with holes, flights 
of steps, and occasional trees, as far as the south, where towered Mount 
Hor, crowned with the tomb of Aaron. Dark peaks arose between us 
and it; and from the ravine below was heard the sound of running 
waters. Then, as we turned, we seemed to look upon chaos, so tre- 
mendous was the confusion of black and brown mountains near, and 
yellow beyond, — bare and precipitous to a degree oppressive to the 
sense : while half way between them and us, was the most singular 
relief that could be found even in this singular place ; — a perfect her- 
mitage ! An extremely narrow path of rock, with a sheer precipice 
on either hand, connected an otherwise isolated summit with the height 
on which we stood: and in a face of that summit was a single excava- 
tion, which had that narrow bridge and a flight of steps all to itself. I 
never saw an abode, for the living or the dead, so utterly solitary as 
this. — Beyond all these objects, and spreading away to the south and 
west, to the utmost limit of vision, was the Desert, — now streaky, now 
shadowy, — all immense and still, — with no marked objects but a faint 
hill or two on the furthest horizon, and a chain of hills to the west. 
Of the piling of the rocks, and the retiring of the ravines near, and of 
the chaos of mountains behind, there is, says my journal, no giving an 
idea: nor can there be a hope of preserving such imagery in its im- 
pressiveness. No faculty is equal to it. 

Mr. E. found in a cave, this day, a dried corpse. The Arabs said 
there was nothing to be seen there ; and they might not know of it : 
but there it lay, wrapped in well-woven cotton. There was some flesh 
left on the bones, — as dry as they. From the modern sewing in the 
joining of the wrapper, we concluded this body to be that of a not very 
ancient Arab. In only one other instance did we meet with human 
bones : — we found a heap of them under some regularly laid stones in 
a cave of the northern ravine. If these many thousands of excavations 
were all tombs, where are all the millions of skeletons gone, — leaving 
actually no trace of one single body ? — Possibly the bodies may be yet 
to be found, in closed receptacles, in some neighboring valley of 
Tombs. 

This morning, the Sheikh came to get a pipe, under pretence of try- 
ing to persuade us to go on to-morrow morning. This evening, he 
required us to take on the same number of camels that we brought from 
Akaba, though our stores were much reduced. In order not to refuse 
everything he asked, we agreed to this. His reason for the request 
became plain, as men and camels grew weaker from want of food, so 
that it required the same number to do the diminished work.- — When I 
say that we agreed to this and that, I mean that Mr. E. did. By this 
time, Mr. E. found himself charged with the whole business of manag- 
ing the Sheikh, and arranging the journey afl'airs, as far as the Euro- 
pean party had anything to do with the matter at all. It was Mr. E.'s 
knowledge of afl'airs and very fine temper which brought this respon- 



PETRA. 



3^9 



sibility upon him. Every one was glad to devolve the business upon 
one so capable and so kindly willing, and who had at once proved 
himself so steady and so good humored in his management of the old 
miser with whom he had to deal. It was very curious and very inte- 
resting to see the effect of his manliness and fine temper upon the 
Sheikh. The old man mistook the moral dignity for that of high birth 
and station; and declared his conviction that Mr. E. was one of the 
greatest men in Europe. It was clear that he really did stand in awe 
of our friend ; and what we should have done without the help of this 
awe, we often wondered. 

This day, we had no milk and no eggs ; and we were warned that 
only two fowls were left. We made ourselves quite easy, however, 
while we had good mutton and biscuit. It rained this evening, and I 
put my hand out of the tent to feel the rain; — the first for so many 
months ! Now it had come, we were to have enough of it. 

I was awakened in the night by a slap in the face from my canopy, 
which was dancing about from the rocking of the tent. The tent cur- 
tains were open, and flapping, as if preparing to take flight. I awoke 
Mrs. Y., and we called the servants to look to the tent-pegs, which 
they had the greatest difficulty in fastening down, from the strength of 
the wind. The dust poured in, till our very bedding was penetrated 
by it. Our clothes were draggling on the ground in this dust; and 
some of them, with three rolling bottles of wine, were picked up out- 
side. Two sets of sleepers in the camp had their tents blown clear 
away to some distance. In the morning, I found that dust had lodged 
between the pages of our books, and even in the depths of my saddle- 
bags. There was then intermitting rain, which settled into a deter- 
mined down-pour at noon. To me, one of the most observable things 
about this rain was its effect upon my own health. For many weeks 
I had been very unwell ; and, since leaving Cairo, had suff'ered from a 
tormenting face-ache. Now, before it had rained an hour, I felt won- 
derfully relieved ; and the benefit of this rain lasted nearly to Damascus, 
where we had more. 

Early in the morning, two of us went a short round, happily choos- 
ing the water-course for our scene of observation. We descended into 
it, and studied the embankments and piers to some distance on either 
hand, little knowing how fortunate we were in using the opportunity. 
It was evident that there were large and substantially built reservoirs 
above the river, near Pharaoh's Palace. The number of cisterns and 
tanks among the rocks, at various heights, we had observed before. 

After breakfast, a large party of us went forth in defiance of the 
heavy showers, thinking that, once among the eastern temples, we 
could flit from cave to cave, and see a great deal with little wetting. 
We did see a great deal ; but the wetting was complete enough. We 
went through the whole range of the great eastern temples, which it 
would weary the reader to hear of one by one. In one, — -that which 
has three tiers of columns, v/e discovered that the architrave, which 
had been stuccoed, was painted in perpendicular stripes. — In several 
of these temples, there is an arched recess opposite the entrance ; and 



I 



360 EASTERN LIFE. 

in two or more, we observed niches within this recess. Whether this 
looks like urn-burial, or heathen sacrifice, people must judge for them- 
selve; In two instances only, we found the ceilings divided super- 
ficially into compartments. As for the rest, what we found was pits, 
stone deewans, and recesses in rows, like stalls in a stable. — The 
capitals of the columns and the cornices were fastened on, and not cut 
out of the rock; and afterwards stuccoed and painted. In one case, 
the rock had failed, near the top of the temple ; and the failure was 
supplied by masonry, supported on an arch. The water-courses by 
the sides of the temple, and, I think, a horizontal gutter, were plainly 
distinguishable here. 

These temples, with their florid decorations, naturally strike a 
stranger more than anything else at first, — they mingle so oddly with 
the odier features of the scene ; but one soon neglects them for the far 
more interesting excavations of an earlier date. I suppose the primi- 
tive abodes (whether of the living or the dead) were those which have 
no ornament at all ; — nothing whatever being done to the outside. But 
after these comes another order, specimens of which may be met at 
every step. These have their whole exterior in its several parts, where 
this can be managed, inclining inwards, in the Egyptian mode; and 
sometimes backwards also. Some of the doorways, and many of the 
pilasters, dfminish towards the top. But the most distinctive mark of 
these Arabian abodes is their parapet. From a point in the middle of 
the cornice, a flight of steps, — that is, a representation of such in re- 
lievo, — retires; — three, four, or six steps, according to the width of the 
building: and a line resting on the top step finishes the parapet. Some- 
times the steps converge from the sides, instead of departing ; and then 
of course, they meet in a top step. This appears odd, and a fancy 
devoid of beauty, at a distance; but it is an ornament appropriate to 
the place, and it looks very well there. We may remember that stairs 
in the rock were a great blessing to the limbs, and a great beauty in 
the eyes, of the inhabitants of this fastness ; — as much so perhaps as 
the fluted column in the eyes of Egyptians and Greeks, to whom the 
flutings were sheaths for their arms; or the laurel-wreath to the Ro- 
mans, in whose minds it was associated with ideas of victory. The 
steps of these Nabathaean (or other Arabian) parapets are homely in the 
comparison : but they are a natural device, and, therefore, not a wholly 
ungraceful one. 

There was nothing in our ramble this morning so pretty as the ground. 
Among the rocks, there were flowery patches, like gardens. And the 
slopes up to the higher excavations, and the platforms and recesses 
among the uneven rocks, were carpeted with grass and wild flowers, 
and clumped with shrubs. Among many familiar wild flowers, I found 
one plant which we never see wild at home. The scarlet anemone 
grew richly and abundantly here, — as abundantly as I ever saw poppies 
in a field. 

For some time, we eluded the worst of the rain by running from cave 
to cave: but at last, by some accident, the parly was scattered. One 
group had gone home early, — afraid of the damp : another was in a 



PETRA. 



361 



lower tier of caves. A third had found dry wood, and made a great 
fire. Two of the gentlemen and I found ourselves in a cave which 
was cold, without guide or dragoman, while the rain was comin down 
like a shower-bath. We waited and watched : and a very pretty thing 
it was to watch the litde white torrents dashing down from the sum- 
mits, here and there, as far as we could see. But these same waterfalls 
were sending streams down the intervals of the slopes before us, — in 
some places already ankle deep. The whole sky was one dark gray : 
and it struck me that, not only was there no prospect of its clearing up, 
but that we were too far from home to run the risk of further delay. 
My companions objected that we had no guide, and were quite ignorant 
of the way; whereas somebody would certainly be coming soon to 
look for us. I had a pocket-compass with me, however, and was quite 
sure of the general direction. I knew that the tents lay south-west, on 
the other side of the water-course. So off we went, as straight as an 
arrow ; — across gullies, over hills, through ankle-deep water, — for it 
was no time for picking and choosing our footing. One of my com- 
panions was lame that day ; but on he must go, over stone-heaps and 
through pools. We found a way down into the water-course, — walked 
many yards along it, — knowing now where we were, — and got out of 
it not far from our platform. Within three minutes, before I had half 
put off my wet clothes, I heard a shout ; — the torrent had come down. 
Down it came, almost breast high, — rushing and swirling among 
the thickets and great stones in the water-course, giving us a river in a 
moment, where we had never dreamed of hoping to see one ! As soon 
as I could, I ran out to the verge of the platform ; and I shall never 
forget the sight. It was worth any inconvenience and disappointment. 
We forgot the dripping tent, from which little rills ran upon our bed- 
steads : we forgot the lost hours of this last day, and our damp ward- 
robes, and all our discomforts. There was the muddy torrent, — or 
rather the junction of two torrents, which divided the channel between 
them for some way ; — the one which had come from the Sik, and past 
the theatre, being muddy, and the other, from the north-east, being 
clear. On came the double stream, bowing and waving the tamarisks 
and oleanders, — the late quarters of the Arabs, who were now looking 
on from the opposite bank ! — Just before sunset, I went to look again. 
The white waterfalls were still tumbling from the steeps ; and the whole 
scene was lighted up by a yellow glow from the west, where the sky 
was clearing. The torrent was still dashing along, making eddies 
among the stones ; and beyond it, in a thicket, under a wall of rock, 
'was a group of Arabs round a fire, whose smoke curled up above the 
trees. — At night, I went out once more ; and that v^^as the finest of all. 
The torrent was too deep within its banks to be touched by the moon, 
which was now shining brightly. The waters could scarcely be seen, 
except in one spot where they caught a gleam from an Arab fire. 
But at this hour, its rush seemed louder than ever. I was startled 
to see how many were looking at it with me. All along the opposite 
ridge, and on every point of the descent, were dim figures of Arabs; 
and in the precipices, there was quite an illumination. Row beyond 



362 



EASTERN LIFE. 



row of the caves gave out yellow gleams; and in the moonlight rose 
little pillars and wreaths of white smoke. The Arabs had come up 
from the whole country round, at the sound of the waters ; and I had 
seen Petra populous once more. 

I could not have supposed I could like a reeking tent so well. Our 
clothes were hung up in all directions, for the chance of a drying: the 
air seemed heavy with steam. My bed was wet, though I had bundled 
it up under a square of Mackintosh cloth, as well as I could : but we 
were very happy still. The best thing was, it was now impossible to 
go to-morrow ; the tents being too heavy with wet to be portable. It 
was no trifle to me to have lost all my aches and pains at once : and then 
there was the thought that I had seen Petra, with its river and its wild 
citizens. We ordered in a large pan of charcoal, and made a very 
pleasant evening of it, after all. I thought at the time as I think now, 
— that there is an agreeable, as well as useful, virtue in these accidents 
of travel; and that those who do not find it so, had better make them- 
selves comfortable at home. 

The next day, the 23d of March, v/as a profitable one. Instead of 
going from cave to cave, which could not now teach us much more, we 
made it our object to obtain some general views of the place ; in which 
v.-e succeeded. The company divided on this last day. Some of the 
gendemen went again in the direction of the Sik, to make another at- 
tempt to copy the often-mentioned Greek inscription, which was on a 
facade near the Khasne. The gentlemen had tried before to spell it out ; 
and now it was to be copied, if possible. It was the wish of our own 
party to trace the area of Petra to the north ; so we set out by our- 
selves, with a sufficiency of armed guides. We thought these Arabs 
very fine-looking people, with faces full of life. They were always 
civil to us, and evidently much amused at our dress and ways. Our 
guides examined Mrs. Y.'s cloak and my trumpet, and showed us 
their muskets in return. They carried muskets, matchlocks, heavy 
clubs, and short-swords. I was never tired of noting their wandering 
figures, brown and gray, on points of rock and sunny slopes. 

Our guides assured us that they led us round by the most northerly 
part of Petra. Of course, they know best, and must be right; but 
there were two ravines which I would fain have explored, if we had 
had more time. We passed through some curious chasms this morn- 
ing, saw many troughs and cisterns, with steps cut over the slopes to 
each ; — overlooked many excavations, and were completely puzzled by 
a new discovery. We found several pits cut in the rock, one of which 
had steps, and the others foot-holes, down one end; and these pits led 
each to a subterranean place which was too dark for us to explore. I 
hope the next traveler who goes will look to this. The most striking 
of the new excavations which we saw was a series of ascending doors 
up the side of a ravine, like the doors of houses in a steep street. This 
series, and a set of facades in stages, withdrawn behind and above one 
another on the southern outskirts, are among the venerable features in 
the architecture of Petra. To-day we saw a large tank, partly walled 
with masonry, placed close by one wholly cut out of the rock. The 



PETRA. 



363 



wall was deep and solid, and the inside of the tank had been stuccoed 
throughout. 

Partly by steps, and partly by sheer clambering, we reached a very 
high point — a round summit — from whence we obtained as fine a view 
of the whole place as its own obstructions allow. Nothing could be 
more unlike the gorge I had imagined before I came. We looked 
down on a large area of undulating ground, with its terrace lines now 
clearly marked enough, and the sites of many great buildings as evi- 
dent as the still-standing Palace itself, with their overthrown columns 
lying beside them in round fragments. The water-course wound 
through the midst, with its confusion of shrubs and bordering rocks. 
To the south, appeared the single standing column, stationed above the 
craggy way by which we had arrived, and by which we were to-mor- 
row to depart. Our platform and tents now appeared to be nearly in 
the middle of the area. Behind them rose rocks, range behind range, 
pierced with portals, gradually increasing in height, and offering more 
facades, till the eye, traveling eastwards, arrived at the valley where 
the theatre is, and could detect the dark cleft of the Sik. Further 
round to the east, rose the great group of fa9ades which we visited 
yesterday : and then the whitish outside mountains showed tliem- 
selves, giving an idea of an opening to the north, which the guards, 
however, deny. All the rest of the circumference was filled up with 
vast precipitous summits, (behind which El Deir was hidden,) gorges, 
and the mystery of steps, cisterns, and caves, till the eye arrived at 
the western facades, and the single column again. This bird's-eye 
view was very valuable : and I do not know that it indicated any one 
great object left unachieved ; though, as I need not say, there is work 
for many successive travelers, and for many weeks of research, when- 
ever a qualified party will set their minds upon going through with it. 
The only thing I much regretted leaving unvisited was a pyramid 
perched upon an extraordinary height; — we thought higher than El 
Deir. We caught a sight of it now and then between the clefts of the 
precipices ; and best, I think, from the platforms before the eastern fa- 
cades. We have no idea what it is, or how it is to be reached. 

In the afternoon came the Sheikh again, with new demands ! The 
conference between him and Alee was a capital spectacle — Alee on his 
haunches before the iron-faced old man — the dragoman's mobile coun- 
tenance now astute, now winning! Hussein refused porter ; but his 
heart was softened when Mr. Y. offered him figs. He gained nothing 
else by his demands : yet he embraced Mr. E., and declared that he 
was certainly the greatest man in Europe, and one whom he would 
always have for his friend. 

In the evening, Mr. W. came to give us the result of his visit to the 
Greek inscription. It was soon told. The whole facade had fallen — 
brought down, no doubt, by the rains of yesterday ! When the party 
arrived, they found the way blocked up by masses of stone ; and the 
guides were aghast at the ruin. It was well for us, and more than we 
could have expected, that they did not attribute the mischief to the 
profanation of our visit, and take vengeance on us accordingly. Mr. W. 



364 



EASTERN LIFE. 



searched, and found a bit of the inscription : but as a whole, it is irre- 
coverable. That far-famed work is gone forever ! This is a warning 
to us not to judge of what Petra was by what we see now. It is na- 
tural to suppose a sort of immutability in a rock-fastness like this : but 
we see here how much depends on the structure of the rock, and the 
influences which operate upon it. The forces of wind and water are 
great at Petra : and the presence of oxide of iron here, as of saltpetre 
in the columns at Karnac, seems to insure the fall of works which 
would appear likely to greet as many generations as the everlasting 
hills. 

I again went out at night, and saw the fires of the Arabs, even in 
some very distant caves. But instead of clear moonlight, there were 
clouds driving in the cold rising wind. I lingered over this night 
view ; for it was the last. In the morning, we were to be off ; and 
the most romantic vision of the travels of my life would be withdrawn. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MOUNT HOR.— FROM PETRA TO THE FRONTIER OF PALESTINE. 

Ox the morning of Wednesday, March 24th, ten of our company 
were off before seven, with a party of guides, to ascend Mount Hor. 
The rest of our number were to set out later, and to await us with 
luncheon at an appointed spot, while the baggage camels were to pro- 
ceed still further, that our tents might be pitched before we reached our 
resting-place. This separation of our party showed that the Sheikh * 
apprehended nothing from enemies just here, though he had been so 
cautious after leaving Akaba. 

I walked out to Petra, wishing to have my last look of it undisturbed. 
It was more striking than ever; and especially the enclosing rocks, with 
their cloven summits and nest-like habitations. The last object, be- 
longing to Petra itself, which was visible, was the single column, which 
we left standing like a sentinel above the pass. As I walked from it, 
I left Petra to its mists and mysterious quietude, and turned my thoughts 
to Mount Hor, which rose immediately before me. 

We were assured that the ascent was only 1500 feet from the high 
ground on which we stood. — -We were well pleased to be permitted to 
ascend this mountain ; but I certainly had no idea at the time how rare 
was the privilege we were enjoying. Burckhardt was prevented, both 
by fatigue and the opposition of his guide, from going further than 
" the high plain called Aaron's terrace, at the foot of the mountain upon 
which his tomb is situated :" that is, the plain on which we now 
emerged from the bed of a torrent, which we had been following for 
some time. Here Burckhardt sacrificed a goat to Aaron, fulfilling the 
pretended vow by which alone he was enabled to get even thus far. 
He declares that he afterwards much regretted having failed to visit the 
tomb. Laborde and Linant had to hurry away from Petra without 



MOUNT HOR. 



365 



ascending Mount Hor. Dr. Robinson was not permitted to attempt it. 
Captains Irby and Mangles went up, by a path needlessly difficult, it 
appears ; and they came down the same way ; thus missing the very 
remarkable objects on the western side of the mountain. 

Captain Mangles says of the ascent, " We began to mount the track, 
which is extremely steep and toilsome, and affords but an indifferent 
footing. In most places, the pilgrim must pick his way as he can, and 
frequently on his hands and knees. At the steepest points tliere are 
flights of rude steps, or inclined planes, constructed on stones laid 
together ; and here and there are notches cut in the rock, to receive 
the foot. The impressions of pilgrims' feet are scratched in the rock 
in many places ; but without inscriptions." Though we went up the 
same side of the mountain, we must have been led by a different path, 
for I remember nothing of going on hands and knees ; and my journal 
says of the ascent, " It is easy, — as rocky ascents usually are, mount- 
ing from platform to platform by stones and water-courses. There 
were many signs of the late rain, and the wild-flowers were fresh and 
pretty. Mr. W. found a red tulip. From the highest platform below 
the summit, we saw, niched in the precipitous opposite mountain, the 
facade of El Deir : and extraordinary it looked ! I could not but think 
of old Aaron, coming up here to die, and wondering what his thoughts 
were and those of his companions." I have always thought that little 
narrative* eminently beautiful. It is so brief, so simple, so full of calm, 
penitent obedience ! 

The Mohammedans make a great saint of Aaron. They have built 
his tomb on the summit of this mountain; and the place has been 
visited in pilgrimage for centuries, and by multitudes. Times are 
much changed now, as I thought when I stood on the summit ; for 
these bigots have so far surrendered their horror at Christians as to 
permit us to see everything here for 20 piastres a head, — the excuse 
for the charge being that it was to pay for candles. 

Just below the summit, some of the party found a fragment of a 
column, and some bits of marble. Within the tomb, — which is a 
square building, with a cupola rising from the middle of the roof, — 
we found a piece of handsome pavement of inlaid marble : and more 
fragments, some wrought and some plain, were mixed in with the 
rough flooring. Two very small carved capitals were lying on the 
ground, and three pieces of the shaft of a column composed three steps 
of the outside flight which led to the roof. Unfortunately we had no 
interpreter with us to obtain information from the old keepers of the 
tomb as to whence these things came, the dragoman being with our 
friends and goods below. The most mysterious thing in the tomb was 
a round, polished black stone (which, however, one of the gentlemen 
believed to be a lump of glass), fixed in the wall, and, judging by the 
mark on the wall round it, kissed by multitudes of devotees. — In the 
chamber stands a sarcophagus of stone and marble, carved, on the end 
next the door, with an Arabic inscription, which had once been on a 



* Numbers XX. 22—29. 



366 EASTERN LIFE. 

blue ground. This was covered in like an oven, and wrapped over 
with a heap of sordid cloths, — votive offerings. Rags and shreds of 
yarn are hung round in great quantities. — There is a crypt, reached by 
a staircase from this chamber, and we went down to see the place where 
the body of Aaron is supposed to have been laid. It is a mere cup- 
board, within an unhinged grating. 

I went up to the roof for the sake of the view, — one last view, from 
a height, of the boundless Desert. Its horizon line was so high as to 
make one look again ; to be sure that one had not taken the hazy sky 
for it. There it lay, with its broad lights and streaks of shadow be- 
yond the crowd of mountains about us. Even my journal declines 
describing these, saying only that wildness is the most indescribable of 
all the attributes of scenery, and that the wadees running between the 
masses catch the eye, and seem the only avenues out of chaos. The 
wind at the top was not high, but rather cold. 

We descended the mountain on its north-east side, by what seems to 
have been the Calvary path of devotees, by the steps cut and facilities 
provided. It is very precipitous, but thus made easy. For some way 
down, it was like a winding staircase: and this staircase led to a sin- 
gular work, not far from the summit. Alighting on a small platform, I 
could not but think it artificial ; and on descending a staircase at one 
corner, like that which led down to the Nilometer, I found a very large 
reservoir, arched over with fifteen arches, which supported the blocks 
of hewn stone composing the platform. The descent to the reservoir 
was also arched. The cavity was not full of water, but there was still 
a good supply. Burckhardt says,* " The plain of Haroun and the 
neighboring mountains have no springs ; but the rain water collects in 
low grounds, and in natural hollows in the rocks, where it partly re- 
mains the whole year round, even on the top of the mountain :" and 
this is clearly the chief reservoir. When we looked up from below 
the platform, we saw that it was supported by a wall of massive ma- 
sonry ; — a great work. On the next area, we found such heaps of 
building stones, and long lines of foundation, as showed that large erec- 
tions had once stood here. There were traces of terraces, one above 
another ; and a pit which had evidently been a large tank. The place 
seems to have been little short of a city : but now we found no signs 
of present habitation, except in a shallow excavation, where the floor 
was strewn with dried reeds, on which stood a caldron. A large flock 
of goats was seen further down ; and the herdsmen probably lived in 
these caves. — In a stony valley, an hour and a half from the summit, 
we met our camels. The ascent, about which we had taken our time, 
occupied two hours : and now, after mounting our camels, we de- 
scended for two hours more, before we joined the rest of our party, 
and sat down to lunch just after two o'clock. 

I was struck by a little incident to-day, which seems to me curious. 
At a difficult part of the ascent, one of my friends advised me to try 
his stick. Of course, I would not deprive him of it : so another of 



Travels in Syria, &c., p. 430. 



PETRA TO PALESTINE. 



367 



the gentlemen cut one for me, from among the low, stout trees which 
grew near. But one of the guides was carrying his cobbous, which 
he was desired to lend me, as more convenient on account of its handle. 
The cobbous is a stick with a very peculiar handle, which makes it 
precisely resemble the Power symbol of the Egyptian gods, and which 
is like no other staff that I know of. The Arab, otherwise a very 
obliging man, was evidently reluctant to make the exchange, even as 
a loan : and for two days, during which I carried his cobbous, he never 
lost sight of me. He kept near my camel, and hung round the tent, 
and looked in, to point to the stick, and sent me messages to remind 
me that it was only lent, and to ask when he should have it again : 
and he would not exchange it for anything whatever. I was disposed 
to think, from observation of him, and of the two or three others who 
carried the cobbous, that it was their symbol of Power or dignity; and 
then I exchanged sticks with him again, to his evident relief. He was 
like another man when he had snatched his cobbous, and hugged it 
once more. 

The rest of the day's journey was a continued and pretty steep 
descent, for an hour and a half, into the plain ; and we encamped in 
Wadee Araba. The mountains showed every variety of hue that we 
had seen in the Peninsula. One black mass rose beautifully out of 
the sands on our left; and while I was admiring it, my eye was caught 
by our tents, ready pitched at the foot of one of its spurs, and beside 
the shrubs of a water-course which bounded our camp on the other 
side. I was not sorry to find we were so near our resting-place, for 
my camel had been very troublesome by lying down, whenever my 
attention wandered from my rein. The animal had had an easy day's 
work, as I had not mounted till after noon. Though it had cropped 
at every bush we passed, I was not fully aware how far the poor beast 
was exhausted with hunger. — We had notice from the Sheikh this 
evening that we must be stirring early in the morning. 

On the 25th, our journey lay through the wadee ; — plain riding, 
sometimes among shrubs, where our camels made a very inconvenient 
rush at the tamarisk twigs, and were always trying to lie down. To 
avoid the irksomeness of this, I walked the greater part of the way, 
sometimes over water-courses so muddy as fairly to daub my boots ; — 
a sign that rain had been here too. I saw three large flocks of wild 
geese, which flew round and round in apparent confusion ; and some 
of the company observed a herd of gazelles afar. It was so hot that 
we waited an hour for luncheon, rather than sit down where there 
was no shade. In half an hour after remounting, the Sheikh wanted 
to encamp ; but we began to think we should never reach Jerusalem 
at this rate, and rode on. I happened to be foremost of our company, 
and I thus came in for a fine sight. 

As usual, ten armed guards were in the van, and the sheikhs were 
pushing their horses hither and thither. The scouts had ascended a 
sandhill, in advance, and a little to the right : and it was plain that 
there was a commotion there. Hasan, the Sheikh second in dignity, 
galloped up, rose in his stirrups, shook his spear, flung away his turban, 



368 



EASTERN LIFE. 



letting his top-knot stream in the wind, and galloped away again, raising 
the sand m clouds wherever it was dry enough. Then, what a hubbub 
there was ! The guards were mustered, the camels driven together 
in a mass, the sheikhs flying about, and giving notice that we were to 
be attacked by Bedoueens from behind the sandhills. The matchlocks 
were made ready, and swords and knives looked to. Just at this 
moment, when I was at the height of expectation of seeing the grandest 
of Desert siglits, an old negro camel-driver ran up, snatched the rein 
out of my hand, and trotted my camel away, pulling it forward with 
all his strength. By every sign I could think of, I ordered him to 
give me my rein : but the old fellow was as imperious as I could be ; 
and we were nearly out of sight of our guard before I came in the way 
of a dragoman who could compel the man to do as I wished. I rode 
back, but met some of my party, who said we were to wait till the 
rest of the caravan came up. There was a gathering and delay behind ; 
and soon a message arrived that one of the ladies had fainted, — not 
from fear, but previous illness, — and could not come on. Here we 
waited an hour, near a pretty little oasis; a jungle of reeds and bushy 
palms, When the alarm seemed over, we dismounted, and sat under 
a thorny-acacia. We wondered whether this little affair was real or 
a sham : but agreed that if it was a sham, the drivers were not in the 
plot. Their alarm was real enough. — Long afterwards, when we were 
in Syria, we learned that the matter was indeed serious. Sheikh Hus- 
sein was smuggling us through the territory of a tribe with whom 
he should have shared the money paid for our passage. The old man 
was really terrified, but pacified the Bedoueens by some means, so 
that they let us pass now: but they rose on him, on his return, shot 
his beautiful horse under him, and killed six of our escort. Poor 
fellows ! it was no fault of theirs. 

At the end of an hour, we saw the rest of the company slowly ap- 
proachino-, and we mounted ; but we went on only for a few minutes — 
to the foot of the Avhite hills which we were to cross the next day. 
We heard no more of the robbers ; but there was a different kind of 
robber in the camp at night, — a wolf which, no doubt, came after our 
sheep. One of the gentlemen saw it; but it was gone before he could 
get his gun ready. — 1 think it w^as this evening that Mr. E. came in, 
in a hurry, to order our rice to be boiled for some of the men, — having 
discovered that our camel-drivers had lived upon grass for two days. 
The Sheikh had provided no food for them. The matter was now be- 
coming serious. We went a shorter distance every day, and were 
perpetually delayed from the inability of the baggage-camels to keep 
up with us. Our own beasts were feeble; yet my driver had more 
than once jumped up behind me without leave. He was forbidden 
to do this again, as the beast was in no condition to carry double: but 
I believe the man was almost as little able to carry himself. — There 
was much doubt this evening whether our invalid companion could 
proceed to-niorrow ; for she was very ill. Happily, there was an 
excellent mesmerist in the company, who tried his power upon her 



PETRA TO PALESTINE. 



369 



with admirable effect. She revived surprisingly, had a quiet night, and 
was in the morning able to go on. 

During the 26th, we traversed the skirts of the mountains of Seir, 
crossing ridges of truncated sand hills, and dropping into basins or 
wadees, tufted with shrubs. We encamped, in a high wind, at the 
foot of the pass of Sufa, which we were to cross very early to-morrow. 

Mrs. Y. and I were off on foot before six. This pass is supposed 
to be the one by which the Hebrews attempted to enter Palestine the 
first time, from Kadesh, when they were driven back to their long 
wandering. Before us was a limestone rock, believed to be a thousand 
feet high. It was split by a ravine, the right side of which we pursued, 
while the camels, and most of the walkers, took the left; and very pic- 
turesque they looked, winding up the heights. At the top, where the 
ravine closed, and was surmounted by a fort, there was scarcely a 
footing for the camels, the steep slope being bare, shelvy limestone, 
with occasional notches or steps, and traces of an old path, but with 
scanty available footing now. It was by this road that the Egyptian 
army entered Syria; and the masonry which I saw at the closure of 
two ravines, and the fort at the summit of the pass, are probably the 
work of Ibraheem Pasha. Some, however, believed the fort to be 
ancient. It was here that we bade farewell to Wadee Araba ; and 
wild beyond description was the scene. 

After walking for three hours among the passes, I found the com- 
pany seated under a tree, compelled to wait for the baggage-camels. 
After resting a considerable time, and then rising, we were stopped by 
the Sheikh, and detained another half hour. So we ordered luncheon, 
to save time. It was only half-past ten : but we had set out very 
early. — Then we went on again, the Sheikh having borrowed a horse, 

and set Lady on his, paying her every attention, by way of 

propitiating the company. I think it was within an hour when I, 
being in advance of the other camel riders, came in view of a shrubby 

wadee, where Lady was sitting in the shade, and the Sheikh 

standing beside his spear, which was stuck in the ground, while his 
men were making fires. Here he meant to encamp: but 1 knew the 
gentlemen behind would not consent to stop so soon, — so necessary as 
it now was to push on to some place where food could be had for men 
and camels. Lady told me the old man was quite deter- 
mined to stop: and he made signs to me to dismount, which I refused. 
He came to me, and made the camel lie down, — the animal unfor- 
tunately understanding Arabic better than English. I made it get up 
again, and rode back to tell the gentlemen what they would find. Mr. 
E. and others declared at once that we should on no account stop till 
four o'clock ; and it was now only one. I asked to be ordered to 
move on; and on we went, — Mr. E. and I and a youth of the party. 
The Sheikh came in front of us; but we passed him with a civil greet- 
ing. He ordered the drivers to make our camels lie down : we made 
them get up again. The worst of it was that the animals were ready 
to take the least hint about stopping. My camel lay down against my 
will thirteen times this day. — The Sheikh himself next caught hold of 
24 



370 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Mr. E.'s rein, and in the most insulting manner, brought his camel 
down on its knees. This was the only moment when I was really 
alarmed. It seemed too much to expect that Mr. E., with a stick in 
his hand, should not rap his knuckles. But I might have known our 
friend's prudence and fine temper better. He raised and turned his 
camel, and went on. 

We agreed now that we were in for it. We had defied the Sheikh 
in the presence of his people, and taken on ourselves the conduct of 
the journey for the time. We conscientiously believed this to be ne- 
cessary, in order to get on to Hebron within any reasonable time, and 
in any condition but that of starvation : but we agreed that we would 
bear in mind the mortification we had inflicted, and spare the old man's 
feelings in other matters as much as we could. On looking back, I 

saw that our comrades were following us ; and soon Lady — 

and the Sheikh appeared in the rear. Our dragoman was grave, and 
some of the Arabs evidently perplexed. 

On we went, through a wadee, strewn with wild flowers, — we three 
in front, and Mr. F. riding not far behind, — when the Sheikh galloped 
past, stopped a-head, in the middle of the way, and waited with his 
spear, as if to bar our progress. We greeted him and rode by. He 
then tried his final manceuvre. He wheeled his horse at full gallop 
round and round us, coming nearer and nearer, till he almost closed 
upon Mr. E. ; and when behind him, raised his spear with a theatrical 
air, and stuck it into Mr. E.'s camel under the tail. I saw that it was 
so gently done that the animal would not be the worse ; and this con- 
vinced me that the whole was a show, for the sake of intimidation. 
Mr. E. was so quiet, that I thought at first that he was not aware what 
was doing: but he turned on his seat with a look which said, as plainly 
as looks can speak, "O ! that is the way you think to frighten me:" 
and rode on as before, — only bidding our young friend let his pistols 
alone. Both this youth and Mr. F. had recourse to their pistols in a 
moment: but there was no occasion for them. Mr. E.'s contempt had 
done the business. The old Sheikh sneaked off", completely crest- 
fallen, and dropped into the rear. The whole scene, which passed 
more quickly than I can describe it, was so ridiculous, — there was so 
much of stage eff"ect about it, — that it made me laugh for an hour after. 
I might have recovered my gravity sooner, but the second Sheikh, 
Hasan, who had come up to see, and to help, I suppose, if necessary, 
was now walking near: and he seemed so utterly perplexed at my 
laughter, that it set me off* again. If I stopped for a moment, he came 
to the head of my camel, and peeped under my hat, with such an ex- 
pression of perplexity and amazement in his face, that it made me 
burst forth again. 

" And now," I said to Mr. E., " what will you do next?" 

"It is now twenty minutes past two. We will ride on till four." — 
I begged for some little concession ; and it was settled that we should 
stop at the next advantageous place after another hour. 

The Sheikh two or three times cantered past us, planted his spear, 
and waited: and when he saw that we did not attend to it, rode on 



PETRA TO PALESTINE. 



371 



again,-— not coming near us, or using any threats. If I had not known 
that the A.rabs, though they can occasionally talk about revenge, are 
not apt to bear malice, I should have felt rather uneasy ; but there was 
no worse result than a confirmation of our Sheikh's conviction that 
Mr. E. was the greatest man in Europe. Our affairs with old Hus- 
sein certainly taught us that the display of force and imperiousness 
which we always hear of as necessary with the Arabs, is no more ne- 
cessary with them than with any other people. Mr. E. did not show 
his arms, or look fierce, or talk big. He was fearless, steady, and 
good-tempered ; and the old chief was as completely subdued as he 
could have been by any demonstration of physical force. Mr. E. had 
the thanks of our whole company for his moderation and firmness; and 
I consider it no small result of our adventures in the Desert that we 
have proof how manly goodness will avail with a tribe of people with 
whom it has hitherto been considered necessary to use force or the 
threat of it. The manliness is, however, indispensable. Reasonable- 
ness and amability will not do without firm speech and fearless face. 

We had the pleasure of entering upon a green wadee before we 
stopped to-day ; — of riding over grass, however thin it might be, — and 
seeing by the wayside the purple iris, large and small, wild oats, daisies, 
butter-cups, and abundance of the homely mallow. The whole ground 
might have been English, except for the fine scarlet anemones, which 
grew as plentifully as any other weed. We had sand-hills on the one 
hand, and stony hills on the other ; and when we came to a pleasant 
nook, partly sheltered from the wind (which blew strong), and over- 
spread with grass, Mr. E. dismounted. I was amused to see the 
Sheikh's celerity in striking his spear, and his emphasis in giving 
orders, as if it was he who had chosen the resting-place. 

Four scorpions were found in two tents, as soon as they were , 
pitched ; and the number of black beedes under the stones was won- 
derful. There was a fort on a rising ground above us ; and from that 
height, the flat-topped trees in the wadees looked picturesque. It was 
observable that they were of larger growth now, day by day ; espe- 
cially the thorny-acacia. 

The dragomen expressed themselves glad that we had nearly done 
with Hussein's Arabs, who had been throughout the journey lazy, 
disobliging, and always wanting pay, — loading the camels badly, and 
spoiling the things, refusing to re-load what fell, and to get water, or 
render any service asked of them. For their rapacity, they had the 
example of their chief: and their laziness might be partly excused on 
the score of weakness from hunger. 

The Sheikh sought an interview this afternoon with Mr. E. ; and he 
demanded the rest of his money. He was told he should have it at 
Hebron, and not before ; whereupon he said he should draw off all 
his men and camels that night, and leave us in the Desert. He was 
told that we could not prevent him, if he chose to do that ; but that he 
had better consider the consequences ; that we had a friend at Cairo in 
the Consul-general, and that if any harm happened to us, or to any 
British subject, through his means, the Pasha would take care that it 



372 



EASTERN LIFE. 



should be very long, indeed, before he heard the last of it. He repeated 
his threat very emphatically, and withdrew. We did not believe he 
would desert us ; but, if he did, we imagined that some Arabs near 
would be happy to take his place, in order to get his money. The 
day before, a party of Bedoueens, armed and formidable looking, had 
appeared from behind the sand hills ; and it seemed doubtful for a few 
minutes whether we were to have peace or war. But, after a conference, 
there was a prodigious kissing all round, and the strangers vanished. 
Sail, the impression was conveyed to us that these men were not satis- 
fied, the cause of their discontent being the same as in the former case ; 
that Hussein was carrying us through their territory without paying 
tribute. There was reason to believe they were now not far off; and 
we thought it probable that they would be thankful to convey us to 
Hebron for Hussein's pay. There was no occasion to ask them, how- 
ever. In the morning, there was Hussein, smoking away as grandly 
as ever ! 

This was the morning of Sunday, March 28th, — a memorable day 
in the history of our journey; for it was that of entering upon the 
Holy Land. It had been agreed over night that we should start early, 
and stop early, in order to have service. We were now about four 
hours from the frontier ; and our faculties seemed sharpened to note 
every object that met our eyes on these outskirts of the most sacred 
region on the earth's surface. How well I remember what the scene 
was at six o'clock, when Mrs. Y. and I were walking in the early sun, 
on a spit of sand, to dry our feet, wet with the dewy grass which had 
been our carpet at breakfast! There we were comparing the impres- 
sions of our childhood about the story of Jesus, and the emotions and 
passions that history had excited in us ; and we saw, the while, the 
breaking up of the camp, and the leading forth of the camels which 
were soon to set us down on his native soil, and possibly near some of 
his haunts. Our course was through thin pasture ; very thin, the 
ground being strewn with stones. The swelling hills bore some re- 
semblance to the Scotch lowlands, but were more interrupted by water- 
courses. A few camels were grazing, and many flocks: a black en- 
campment of Arabs was on a distant slope, and we met a woman here 
and there, leading the goats. To the east were the blue mountains 
w^hich enclosed the Dead Sea. No one could tell the exact moment of 
crossing the frontier; but it was just after ten when we were assured 
that we had entered Palestine. 



P AET III. 

PALESTINE AND ITS FAITH. 



" To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose nnder the heaven." 
— Ecclesiasies, iii. 1. 

First the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn in the ear.'" — Mark iv. 28 

" Dans tout le monde connu. vers I'ere chretienne. et dans toutes les classes eclairees 
ou vulgaires de ce monde, on sembla ressentir au merae instant le besoin de s'en 
remettre a un nouvel ordre d"idees. qui aurait pour premiere loi de s"adresser aux 
ames beaucoup plus encore qu'aux esprits epuises ; de lompre toutes les barrieres re- 
ligieuses etablies entre les inities et les profanes, et de dissiper de fond encomble^ 
comme rhonneiu: en a appartenu au christianisme, un agregation tumultueuse de 
deesses et de dieux qui ne laissaient prives de leur exemples et de leur protection 
aucim genre d'absurdites ni de vices.'" — Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine. — Salvador, i. p. 
67. 

" And here we cannot but by the way take notice of that famous and remarkable 
stor}' of Plutarch's in his Defect of Ohacles, concerning demons lamenting the 
death of the great Pax. In the time of Tiberius (saith he), certain persons embark- 
ing from Asia for Italy, towards the evening sailed by the Echinades, where, being 
becalmed, tliey heard from thence a loud voice calling one Thamous, an Egyptian 
mariner amongst them, and after the third time commanding him. when he came to 
the Palodes. to declare that the Gbeat Pajt was Dead." — Cudworth. — Intellectual Sys- 
tem. I. ch. iv. p. 345. 



PALESTINE AND ITS FAITH. 



CHAPTER 1. 

ENTRANCE UPON THE HOLY LAND.— HEBRON.— BETHLEHEM. 

The first thought or impression which I remember as occurring on 
my entrance into the Holy Land, was one of pleasure that it was so 
like home. When we came to towns, everything looked as foreign as 
in Nubia : but here, on the open hills, we might gaze round us on a 
multitude of famihar objects, and remember to whose eyes they were 
once familiar too. Never were the rarest and most glorious flowers so 
delightful to my eyes as the weeds I was looking at all this day ; — the 
weeds of our hedges and ditches and fields; for I knew that in his 
childhood He must have played among them ; and that in his man- 
hood, he must have been daily familiar with them. If his family and 
that of John were related, and if the family of John hved at Hebron, 
the probability is strong that Jesus may have been in the very district 
through which we traveled this day. So general as were the habits 
of travel among the Hebrews, and so often as the men had to come up 
to Jerusalem to the feasts, it is scarcely likely that relatives should not 
visit each other when so near as Jerusalem is to Hebron. So I already 
saw that vision which never afterwards left me while in Palestine, — of 
One walking under the terraced hills, or drinking at the wells, or rest- 
ing under the shade of the olives : and it was truly a delight to think 
that besides the palm and the oleander and the prickly pear, he knew, 
as well as we do, the poppy and the wild rose, the cyclamen, the bind- 
weed, the various grasses of the way-side, and the familiar thorn. This, 
and the new and astonishing sense of the familiarity of his teachings, — 
a thing which we declare and protest about at home, but can never ade- 
quately feel, — brought me nearer to an insight and understanding of 
what I had known by heart from my infancy, than perhaps any one 
can conceive who has not tracked his actual footsteps. But it is too 
soon to enter on this now. 

We entered Palestine at the close of the rainy season, which ordina- 
rily ends with March. A few drops of rain fell to-day, and the wind 
was cold. In about an hour from the frontier, we came upon a meager 
bit of ploughing; — the first cultivation we had seen for some weeks. 
Then there was more, on a better soil, and some cross-ploughing, with 
a rude antique-looking plough, and a camel. The soil was reddish, 



376 



EASTERN LIFE, 



and much encumbered with stones. The myriads of little locusts, or 
grasshoppers, which swarmed for miles, were beyond belief. They 
lay, hke clusters of bees, on the grass, covering it for large spaces ; and 
they filled the air, for about a foot above the ground, by jumping as we 
passed. I may safely say I never saw so many living creatures in the 
same space before ; for it seems to me that the gnats and frogs in an 
American swamp are not to be compared to these brown locusts for 
multitude. 

We encamped about three o'clock, at a distance of four or five hours 
from Hebron. The place chosen was a level plot of weedy and stony 
ground among the hills which we were to cross in the morning. It 
was high ground, as we found by the cold : and it was not thought 
very safe, as we learned by the rumors of wild Bedoueens. After ser- 
vice, some of the gentlemen explored the site, and were reasonably 
convinced that a town of considerable size had stood here. We had 
already passed one, called now El Arat, supposed to be the Aroer of 
Scripture ; of which there remains a large building on a height, two 
standing columns, and mounds of stones. Here already was another: 
and for some days to come we w^ere to be more and more impressed 
with wonder at the magnitude and number of the remains we had to 
pass. Nothing that I have seen in other countries gives an idea of 
such a thickly settled territory as this part of Palestine must once have 
been. From the frontier to Jerusalem, the towns must have been in 
sight of one another, 1 should think all the way ; and in some places, 
many must have been in view at once. And such fine-looking places 
too ! No brick, — no mud, — no mere piles of rough stones from the 
hill sides : but square houses of hewn stone, with flat roofs, rising in 
tiers on the slope of the hill, or crowning its summit, or set within an 
angle of the terraced heights. 

The remains round our encampment consisted of long lines of foun- 
dations, and numberless inclosure walls, almost razed to the ground; 
and the overthrown columns of three edifices; and the orifice of a sub- 
stantially built well, with a hole in the rim, into which the pin of the 
covering-stone no doubt once fitted. There were caverns in the lime- 
stone rock, under some of the overthrown edifices. These caverns 
were once their vaults, but are now used to bed the goats. Such a site 
was the very place for scorpions ; and two were immediately found. 

All the next day we continually saw gaping wells beside our path, 
and under every angle of the hills where the}^ were likely to be kept 
filled. They were not now carefully covered, with a stone so massive 
as that the daughters of the patriarchs could not roll it away : — the 
country is too scantily peopled now for such care : but we could still 
see turbaned men sitting beside the opening; and cattle crowding, and 
sheep and goats led to it. Our way at first to-day lay over the hills 
where there were no visible tracks. These hill sides were very stony; 
but they also abounded in shrubs and grass and weeds, whereon hung 
the pearly dew-drops which look so beautiful to those who come here 
by w^ay of the Desert. It was all very like home, — fike the wilder 



ENTRANCE UPON THE HOLY LAND. 



377 



parts of England, except for our Arab train, and the talk about wild Be- 
doueens, for whom our scouts were carefully on the look-out. 

This reminds me of a little adventure of this day which is not down 
in my journal, but which I clearly remember, from a certain novelty of 
sensation which attended it. The face-ache which I had had almost 
from the day I left Cairo, had now increased to a degree which was 
really terrible. This morning it was worse than ever ; and I dis- 
mounted, partly from the restlessness of pain, and partly because I 
thought exercise might act as a counter-irritant. I was advised to try 
smoking ; and I found great relief for a short time. My own party 
passed me while I was looking better from this cause, and were there- 
fore not anxious about me. But before half the long train had gone by, 
the pain came back; and when Alee and the baggage camels passed,! 
could neither speak nor make a sign. I sank down on the wet ground 
fainting, just after the last had gone by. Still the rear-guard were to 
come. They passed without seeming to heed me. I was on sloping 
high ground which happened to command the bases of the hills for 
about a mile ; and with my dizzy sight I could see, opening my eyes 
from time to time, when the first of the troop went out of sight, and 
when half were gone, and, at length, when the last disappeared. Here 
1 was alone, indeed, on the hills of Judea. I did not expect to be long 
alone ; for I supposed that the wild Bedoueens would pounce upon me 
immediately: but I was too weak to feel frightened. I tried to rise 
several times ; but I could not stand. I do not know exactly how long 
it was, but it must have been a considerable time, before two armed 
Arabs came up, shouting, and running from different directions. They 
were of our escort. They had seen me in passing, and had run on for 
my camel, which presently appeared. They lifted me on; but it was 
still some time before we could make any way. At last, I saw what 
encouraged me to an effort; though indeed I had every motive before 
in the danger I knew my poor Arabs to be in, so far from their com- 
rades: but now there was hope in view. One of the gentlemen had 
stopped to arrange his gun : and he and his dragoman and driver were 
dismounted, within half a mile of us. In a little while, he had sent on 
for brandy, and made my camel kneel till I should be more fit to pro- 
ceed. And then, of course, up came my kind friends, who could 
hardly be persuaded that it was nobody's fault. I felt throughout that 
I should be missed at lunch and hardly before ; for, in a caravan like 
ours, everybody is supposed to be somewhere in the train; and my 
friends were aware that I thought them more watchful over me than 
was at all necessary. As it was, I know better than any of them what 
it is to be alone on the wild hills of Judea. 

About two hours short of Hebron, the shrubs congregated into thickets 
about our path, and we had white briar roses dancing on the sprays. 
Here the beautiful cyclamen began to peep out from under gnarled roots of 
old trees, or stones, or bunches of moss. From place to place, I henceforth 
saw this delicate and graceful flower, till we left the skirts of Lebanon 
for the shore of the Mediterranean. I was presently surprised to see 
Mr. E. promoted downwards from his camel to riding the Sheikh's 



378 



EASTERN LIFE. 



horse. He told me that he had declined it repeatedly, hut that "some 
men have greatness thrust upon them," and he found it best to accept 
his at last. This was our final day with Hussein. He was tq be paid 
off in the evening ; and this was his way, we supposed, of making up 
matters before parting with the greatest man in Europe. 

We had now begun to observe that cleared fields, fenced with stone 
walls, were on our left hand. The ploughed fields had a deep yellow 
soil. And soon came vineyards and oHve-grounds, where the shadows 
of the spreading trees were cast on a soil of deep red. The vines ap- 
peared very old; but we liked the Hebron Avine which we afterwards 
tasted. In almost every vineyard was a tower, built of the stones which 
lay about : — a place for the watchman and the tools, I believe. And here 
we were already among those natural commentaries on the Gospel which 
we henceforth met with from day to day. Here, before us, men had 
"digged a wine-press, and built a tower." 

But on this spot the mind of the gazer is or ought to be carried back 
far beyond the time when there began to be vineyards here at all ; to 
the time when the whole of this expanse of country was pasture land, 
and the flocks were on the hills, and the herdsmen, abiding in the field 
by night, worshiped the stars. Here, in those days, was that worship 
of the Sun whose traces we were to meet with throughout the rest of 
our journey. Here, upon the plain of Mamre, nothing was more natural 
than such worship to men who, living in tents in wide pasture lands, 
with the brilliant sky of the East overhead, saw sun and moon daily 
rise behind the mountains of Moab, and go down towards the sea, to 
let the dews descend and freshen the grass of the pastures. Here it 
was that these Sun-worshipers found among them the tents of a mighty 
prince* who did not worship sun or star. Here it was that Abraham 
fed his flocks both before and after his visit to Egypt. Here, as he sat 
under the terebinth tree, in the plain, he could tell neighbor and guest 
of those wonderful works of Egyptian art of which we could now have 
told in the same place. Here he could astonish the shepherds of Mamre 
with descriptions of the marvels, and hints of the mysteries of the 
Pyramids ; and with an account of the honors with which he had been 
treated at Memphis. Here it was that Sara died; and within view of 
where we now stood was the field leading up to a hill, wherein was a 
cave in which Abraham wished to bury his dead. There was the hill 
now, before us, with the cave in the midst of it, where the patriarch 
himself was afterwards laid. 

Then, after several generations, other herdsmen came hither, who 
could tell more of Egypt than even Abraham. Hither came the sons 
of the generation who had come out of bondage. Years ago they had 
buried Miriam, not far to the south of this place; then they had seen 
Aaron go up Mount Hor to die ; and now lately, Moses had disappeared 
from their eyes. They had not yet fulfilled the desire of Moses by 
becoming a nation, — a people with One God and a single faith. They 
were so little united yet by any national spirit as to be prepared for the 



* Genesis XXIII. 6. 



HEBRON. 



379 



cruel civil wars which took place as soon as they obtained arms ; that 
is, under the Judges, presently after. Meantime, here they were, per- 
mitted by the Philistines to pasture their flocks, and learning the while, 
something of the arts of war and of civil life from the neighbors whom 
they hated and despised as unclean, because uncircumcised: — the only 
uncircumcised people within their knowledge. 

Then, again, some generations later, after the barbarian wars of the 
times of the Judges, during which the institutions of Moses appear to 
have been completely lost sight of, and the worship of Jehovah to have 
been only one item in a wide idolatry, — during which, in the historical 
language, "every man did that which was right in his own eyes;" — 
immediately after that dark time, three women passed this way, — un- 
less Orpah had already turned back to yonder mountains, where her 
old home lay. Here at least passed old Naomi and Ruth ; and greatly 
astonished would Ruth have been to be told that she was to be the 
great-grandmother of a king who should be crowned in the city then be- 
fore her eyes; a king who should so sing as that the human race should 
echo his strains through all future time ; and who should take the strong 
rock-fort of Jebus, some way to the north, and make of it a city so holy, 
as that its very name should be music for ever. Little did the gentle 
Ruth think of these things when she and Naomi passed this way. 

Whether the greatest man, after Moses, in all Israel, Samuel, was 
ever here, I beheve we are not told ; but, as he Hved in Ramah, and 
journeyed much, it is probable that he was. He too, like Moses, was 
disappointed in his wisest wishes for this people ; and he, like Moses, 
appears to have overrated their moral capacities. The people would 
have a king, and a very bad one. Here their second king was crowned, 
not as sovereign of Israel, but, as yet, of Judah only. Here the Hmited 
dignity was given, and here David lived for seven years and a half be- 
fore he took the oath which made him king of all Israel. Hebron would 
not longer serve for his residence, as it was necessary for him to live 
where he could communicate easily with other parts of his dominion, 
and especially where he could command the valley of the Jordan; he, 
therefore, took the rock-fort of Jebus, and fixed his abode upon Zion, 
whose praises he thenceforth celebrated as never city was celebrated 
by mortal man. Six of David's sons were born in Hebron. Of these, 
Solomon was not one, he being the son of Bathsheba whom, as we all 
know, David took to wife at Jerusalem ; but two of the six were Abso- 
lom, who here declared his rebellion, and Adonijah, who assumed the 
government while David lay dying, in order to exclude Solomon, the 
favored son of Bathsheba. From the time of David's removal to Jeru- 
salem, we hear little more of Hebron, except as one in the list of fortified 
cities. Once upon a time, however, the Idumasans came up from Petra, 
and took it ; and it was theirs till Judas Maccabseus drove them out. 
If this was the city " in the hill country in Judea," where the Baptist 
was born and reared, this is a strong interest connected with the place, 
and the latest, except for those who like to follow the career of the 
Crusaders. 

I little thought ever to have felt any touch of the crusading spirit; 



380 



EASTERN LIFE. 



but I was surprised by an impulse of it, on turning the shoulder of the 
hill which had hidden Hebron from us. The town looked very pretty, 
sloping down in the sun, on the two eminences on which it is built; 
but the most conspicuous thing in it is the mosque which covers the 
Cave of Machpelah. It was not the thought of this burial-place of 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob which gave me a momentary ill-will to the 
Mohammedans. It was the thought of the devout John, who had for a 
disciple, for a time, a greater than himself. I was presently ashamed 
of the absurd and illiberal emotion ; and, as I looked upon the minaret, 
felt that the Mohammedans had as much right to build over sacred 
places as the Empress Helena : though one must heartily wish they 
had all let it alone. — As soon as we thus came in view of the town, we 
sat down on the hill side, to rest and refresh ourselves, sending on the 
baggage, that our tents might be pitched on the quarantine ground, 
south of the town, in readiness for us. 

We found our tents pitched on thick short grass, with the tombs of 
the Turkish cemetery behind us, and the town in full view in front. 
On the green, a company of Turkish soldiers was exercising. They 
looked mean, — one might say vulgar, in their European blue uniform : 
but the gentlemen said they went through their business very well. 

There was time to look about us, before thinking of Hebron ; for there 
must be a negotiation first with the Governor and the Doctor about our 
obtaining immediate pratique. While the tiresome dispute was pro- 
ceeding, I sat at the tent door, much amused at the delight of our ser- 
vants in buying fresh bread, oranges, wine, &c., after our long absence 
from all markets. The idlers who hung about us were a very hand- 
some set of people: and in the town, we were yet more struck with the 
beauty of those we passed. There was something cheerful in meeting 
the women with faces uncovered, after the dark, dismal veiling we had 
been accustomed to so long. Among all the Jews we saw, I observed 
only one who had what we call the Jewish cast of countenance. Here, 
and at Jerusalem and elsewhere, we saw many Jews with fair com- 
plexions, blue eyes, and light hair. Such eyes I never saw, as both 
the blue and the brown ; soft, large, noble eyes, such as bring tears into 
one's own, one knows not why. The form of the face was usually fine, 
and the complexions clear brown or fair:— the hair beautiful. The 
drawback was the frequency of scrofulous disease among them, which 
I observed particularly at Jerusalem. We went to the synagogue at 
Hebron, through the winding alleys of the Jew quarter. The Chief 
Rabbi being absent, we could not see the valuable MSS. said to be laid 
up here : but we saw one pretty sight, in the beautiful children who 
were at school in the synagogue. They were very few, — not more, I 
think, than ten or twelve ; and the building was small and mean. We 
looked into the house of the Chief Rabbi, being invited in by his cheer- 
ful hospitable wife, who wished us to stay for coffee. We would not 
put her to this trouble: but presently we met her venerable husband; 
and he pressed us all to go in and dine ! — a party which would have 
filled his house ! Fle was a gray-bearded, picturesque-looking old man. 
Next, we were conducted to a glass-house, — of all odd places to see in 



HEBRON. 



381 



Hebron ! I would recommend a Newcastle one in preference, as there 
the glass is not greenish and thin, and the articles made can stand up- 
right. We thought here as before, however, that the Arabs are expert 
enough at manual arts, if they had fair play with tools and material. 

The most interesting object in Hebron, the tombs of the Patriarchs, 
is of course inaccessible to Christians. Neither Jew nor Christian is 
permitted to set foot within the mosque. We walked nearly round it, 
and caught a view of the long flight of steps inside. We saw also the 
cistern where the worshipers wash; and that was all. It is believed 
that the Faithful themselves are not permitted to enter the Cave of 
Machpelah. Above the cave, a small mosque is built : and the mosque 
stands in a court, which is surrounded by the great circuit wall under 
which we walked. This massive stone wall is fifty or sixty feet high, 
and extends for about two hundred feet in length. It is needless to 
say that it effectually prevented our seeing anything beyond itself. 

In returning to the tents, we passed the two pools, believed to be very 
ancient, from which the town draws its whole supply of water. These 
pools are filled by the rain merely : and one of them was very weedy 
and foul when we saw it. The other was clear. They are large and 
deep: the larger measuring, according to Dr. Robinson,* one hundred 
and thirty-three feet square, with a depth of nearly twenty-two feet. 
One of these is called the King's Pool, and is, according to tradition, 
the pool mentioned 2 Sam. iv. 12, as the scene of a horrible execution 
in David's time. 

It was so cold this evening that we were glad of a charcoal fire in 
our tent. The Sheikh perceived this to be a good time for extorting 
money, by interfering with a lady's shelter for the night. He did not 
meddle with Mr. E., having had enough of him. He took his money 
very quietly; and we congratulated Mr. E. on having done with him. 
But an urgent message came from two of the clergymen, begging Mr. E. 
to come and help them to get rid of the Sheikh. We thought our 
friend had already had too much put upon him, and saw no occasion 
for his being mixed up with further quarrels, when he had finished the 
general business; and we dissuaded him from going. A second mes- 
sage came, however, so urgent as to summon him ; and there he found 
the Sheikh pulling down the tent from over the heads of these gentle- 
men and the sister of one of them. He was going to seize both their 
tents, if they did not immediately pay some absurd demand which he 
had imagined for the occasion. Mr. E. obtained only an abatement of 
forty-four piastres : and the rest was paid at once, to enable the lady to 
go to rest. — In the morning, the Sheikh requested permission, and cer- 
tainly with genuine anxiety, to shake hands with Mr. E. This was 
refused: and all that he could obtain by humble and persevering sup- 
plication, was permission to touch Mr. E.'s hand. He finally asked 
for a testimonial letter ; but was told that he had better say nothing 
about it, as we could report little favorable of him : whereupon he gave 
us such a salutation as we should have looked for if he had obtained 



* Biblical Researches, II. 432. 



382 



EASTERN LIFE. 



what he wished. Mrs. Y. and I watched from the cemetery the pro- 
cess, — most tumultuous to-day, — of loading and setting off the camels 
on their return. They were delayed by the discovery of the theft of a 
pistol from one of the tents. The Governor was sent for ; and he or- 
dained that the Sheikh should deduct the value of the pistol from his 
final pay; and this was done; and Sheikh Hussein and his train rode 
away. I have mentioned what adventure befell him on his return. 

We had twenty miles to ride to-day, — to Bethlehem. When the 
horses were ail appropriated, there remained some donkeys for the rest 
of us: and I had the smallest that 1 ever mounted. After so many 
weeks on a camel, this was like riding a rat. But there was no fatigue 
in it, when we had once passed the very bad paved road near Hebron ; 
and the country was beautiful. The scenery was of the same charac- 
ter as yesterday; — stony hills, tufted with shrubs; fields of a deep yel- 
low or red soil, ploughed to-day with bullocks ; many pools and pic- 
turesque old wells, sunk and weed-grown : but the trees were larger, 
the shrubs finer, and the wild flowers gayer and more profuse. None 
were more abundant than the cyclamen. 

We forgot the tree of Abraham till we had passed the way to it too 
far to return ; and we were not much concerned at it, — hardly sup- 
posing that the tree under which the Patriarch received the three visit- 
ants can be visible now. Two gentlemen of the company had gone; 
and we proposed to be content with their report. We lunched under 
a spreading tree, in the shadow of a rock; and as we threw our egg- 
shells about, little imagined what comfort we were providing for our 
two comrades in the rear. One of them was on foot; so that both were 
at the mercy of the country people. Their guide played them false; 
they were threatened and assailed, and had to fight and find their way 
as well as they could. While in some uncertainty, they arrived at this 
resting-place, saw our egg-shells, and knew that they were in the right 
road. The walker was dreadfully exhausted when they joined us at 
Bethlehem in the evening. 

We met a company of pilgrims this morning, — very like the group 
in Eastlake's picture, only that they were leaving the Holy City, in- 
stead of hastening to it. There were more women than men ; and they 
were very good-looking ; less travel-worn than could have been ex- 
pected, after a pilgrimage first to Mekkeh, and then to Jerusalem. 
They were now on their way home; some few on horses and asses, but 
the greater number on foot : perhaps five-and-tvventy in all. — A little 
further on we came to a large khan, with a vast reservoir; the resting- 
place of the pilgrims who come this way, and the watering-place of 
their beasts. 

At the end of twenty miles from Hebron, we came upon a very fine 
view. On the ridge of a hill before us rose the convent of St. Elias, 
which we knew to be almost within sight of Jerusalem. A valley lay 
on our left hand, from which sloped hills whose recesses were wooded 
with olive groves. High up one of these hills, and in the midst of the 
olive groves, was a village — one of the handsome stone-built villages 
of Palestine, on which the setting sun was now casting its last golden 



BETHLEHEM. 



383 



gleam. To our right lay Bethlehem. To our right we turned; for 
news met us at this corner that we could be lodged in the Latin con- 
vent at Bethlehem. We descended through the narrow streets of the 
village, and passed along the road, half-way up the rocks, to the con- 
vent, which stands on a point nobly commanding the eastern plain, as 
far as the hills which enclose the Dead Sea. It was too dusk now to 
see much of this ; and we left all research till the morning. — We were 
kindly received by the friars, and had good rooms and thoroughly clean 
beds. There was no annoyance whatever but gnats. The moon shone 
in splendidly all night: a great blessing to me ; for I was not yet suffi- 
ciently at ease to sleep. I have a pleasant recollection of that night, 
however, — the moon shining full in at the high window, and showing 
me the ample spaces of that lofty and large apartment ; and the cer- 
tainty being before me of seeing to-morrow the fields where Ruth 
gleaned among the maidens of Boaz, and the pastures where a shep- 
herd-boy once tended his father's flocks, — now seeking smooth stones 
for his sling among the brooks, and now delighting himself with that 
young song which was to grow divine, and to become the worship of 
future ages and nations, — in the islands of the Southern ocean, and 
the cathedrals of Europe, and among the forests of the western world. 
It was strange to think what the Psalms of David have become, and 
then to remember that in the morning we should see the very valleys 
and hill-sides where he led his sheep, and tried his young voice, with 
the echoes for his chorus. 

On that morrow (Wednesday, March 31st), we had these anticipated 
pleasures, — of seeing the face of the country where Ruth and her de- 
scendant David were out in the fields ; but we now began to experience 
that pain, — so much greater than can be anticipated, — to one's cher- 
ished associations, which is the birth of superstition at home and on 
the spot. We hear much complaint from travelers of their pain from 
the superstition on the spot; but little or nothing of the perplexity or 
disturbance from the superstition they have left behind or brought with 
them. The superstition I refer to is the worship of the Letter of the 
Bible, to the sacrifice of its spirit. As to the comfort and pleasure of 
the traveler in the Holy Land, it may truly be said that "the letter 
killeth, but the spirit raaketh alive." I had opportunity to see the 
difference between those who were in bondage and those who were 
free. One of the best things that Coleridge ever said was that our 
idolatry would be succeeded by bibliolatry. When I saw abroad, as I 
continually see at home, the curse of this bibliolatry, I thought it hard 
to say which was the worst of the two. In Idolatry, Christian or pa- 
gan, there is always some true idea involved, however much corruption 
may be associated with it : but in the awful error of mistaking the 
Records of the origin of Judaism and Christianity for the messages 
themselves, there seems no redeeming consideration. The error of 
bibliolatry is the more gratuitous of the two. There is no declaration 
in the Records themselves that they are anything more than records : 
and if the writers could have foreknown that the hearts and minds 
which ought to be occupied with the history and the doctrine would be 



384 



EASTERN LIFE. 



enslaved by a timid and superstitious regard to the wording of the re- 
cords, they would have been as much shocked at the anticipation as any 
of us can be at the sight of it. — We all know, as well as Coleridge did, 
that this is only a temporary form of an evil which took other shapes be- 
fore, and will take other shapes again. We know that there was far 
more freedom of religious imagination, reason, argument, and, I may say, 
knowledge among our Protestant divines a century ago than there is 
now. This corruption of bibliolatry has so increased upon us, our faith- 
less and irreverent timidity has so grown upon us, even in that time, 
that it would be an act of great courage in divines of our day to pubhsh 
what divines of a century ago were honored for publishing. It is dif- 
ficult now for philosophers to make known, — in England, for the in- 
cubus presses chiefly there, — what can be proved to be scientifically 
true, in geology and some other directions ; and it is much more diffi- 
cult for philosophers and scholars to make known what can be proved 
to be historically true or false. Of course, our generation loses terribly 
by this, both in knowledge and in health of mind. Bat the evil will pass : 
and, though it is to be feared that it will only pass into some new form 
of idol homage, we will hope that men may ere long lift up their heads, 
and use their powers freely, as those should do who believe themselves 
sons of God, and heirs of Christian liberty, and not slaves or infants 
under the bondage of the Law or the Letter. 

No one at home could feel all this more strongly than I did before I 
went to the East ; and I think no one who has felt it at home can help 
being full of sorrow and pity there for those who go through the scenes 
of Palestine with the timid heart, and narrow, anxious mind of super- 
stition. Instead of " looking before and after," and around them in the 
broad light of historical and philosophical knowledge, which would re- 
veal to them the origin and sympathy and intermingling of the faiths 
of men, so that each may go some way in the interpretation of the 
rest — instead of having so familiarized themselves with the wants and 
tendencies of men as to recognize in successive faiths what is derived 
and what is original — instead of being warned that any faith becomes 
corrupted within a certain length of time by the very zeal of its holders : 
instead of having the power of setting themselves back to the time when 
Christ lived and spoke, so as to see and hear him as if he lived and 
spoke at this day, our travelers may be seen — even clergymen of the 
Church of England — getting leave from the Bishop of Jerusalem to 
carry wax candles in Passion Week in the processions in the Church 
of the Holy Sepulchre, and making obeisances to the priests, candle in 
hand. Travelers may be observed throughout doing one of two things ; 
overlooking, more or less consciously — the incompatibilities of the Scrip- 
tural narrative — the absolute contradictions which can by no means be 
reconciled ; or so fastening their whole attention upon one narration, to 
the exclusion of the parallel ones, as to escape the necessity of the re- 
cognition of variance. I met with one devout pilgrim who was ac- 
tually unaware of any incompatibilities in the different narratives of 
the birth and infancy of Jesus ; and who declared, previous to inquiry, 
that there could be none, because — not the facts or doctrine — but the 



BETHLEHEM. 



385 



narrative was the Word of God ! I saw repeated instances of a gro- 
veling superstition, a formal observance of days and places, which, 
made me wonder whether, if the groves and altars of Baal and Ash- 
taroth had now been standing in their old places, there would have 
been much to choose between such homage paid to them and to the 
actual holy sites of Palestine. How different is the truer reverence of 
those who go enhghtened by knowledge, and animated by a higher 
faith ! — who believe that the history of man is truly the Word of God; 
and that the reason why the gospel is especially called so is because 
those Glad Tidings are the most important event in the history of man. 
How infinitely venerable to them are the great religious Ideas which 
they know to have been the guiding lights of men from the remotest 
past, and which Christ presented anew, purified and expanded ! What 
an exquisite pleasure it is to stand where Jesus stood, and look around 
upon the old faiths and sectarian tenets of the world, and bring forth 
from them all a faith and hope which should, notwithstanding dreadful 
corruptions, elevate mankind through many future ages ! — to have in- 
sight into the sacred mysteries of Egypt, and the national theology and 
Law of Sinai, and the ritual morality of the Pharisees, and the philo- 
sophical skepticism of the Sadducees, and the pure and peaceable and 
unworldly aspirations of the Essenes, and to see how from all these to- 
gether come the ideas, and from the unseen world the spirit, of the re- 
ligion which Jesus taught ! While the devotee looks for traces of his 
footsteps, the disciple finds everywhere traces of his spirit. While 
the devotee listens timidly to traditions, the disciple hears everywhere 
the echoes of his living voice. While the devotee pores over the text 
of the narrative, not daring even to bring parts to bear on each other, 
which may throw light on the whole, the loving disciple so opens his 
entire mind and heart as to perceive the Holy One with all his powers; 
with his understanding receiving the doctrine — with his hope accept- 
ing the promises — with his conscience adoring the spirituality — and 
with his imagination accompanying the Teacher in all his haunts — in 
the wilderness, and in the Temple courts, and by the shores of the 
Lake. On the spot, one hardly beheves that it can be the same faith 
that takes one man through the land, holy guide-book in hand, with the 
timid, tentative gait of the devotee, and another man, confiding in his 
guiding instincts, with the free, joyous step of the disciple who has 
found his Lord. 

As for the superstition of the region — the Christian superstition — I 
need say nothing in advance of the pain which it causes. The merest 
mention of what was shown to us is enough. I do not think that tra- 
velers can be right in avoiding the Christian establishments in Pales- 
tine. The spectacle answers the same purpose as the reading of the 
Spurious Gospels. The spectacle and the reading are both painful ; 
but they are very useful and enlightening, and stimulate to a great deal 
of wholesome thought. Feeling thus, I saw everything that any one 
offered to show me — except the mummeries of Easter Week in the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. From that exhibition I 
did shrink ; and I stayed at home while two English clergymen and a 
25 



386 



EASTERN LIFE. 



lady were carrying wax-candles in the way I mentioned. At Bethle- 
hem was our introduction to the monkish sights of Palestine. 

In the morning, a friar showed us the church, built, as every one 
knows, over the cave of the Nativity. It is a handsome church, with 
departments for Greek, Latin, and Armenian worship. The crypt 
could not be entered then, as mass was going on — and curious was the 
effect, as seen from the entrance of the grotto, of the chanting con- 
gregation crowded into a subterranean cave, all yellow light, and 
smoke, and closeness. It Avas in these underground places that St. 
Jerome lived and wrote ; and this was a real interest belonging to the 
place. When we returned to the crypt, after mass, we saw the silver 
star which is laid in the pavement in the precise spot of the supposed 
birth of Jesus ; and the recess where Joseph waited for the news, and 
the corner where a marble manger has replaced the original one; (for 
even the friars did not pretend that this was the original manger;) and 
the place where the Magi presented their offerings ; and, at some dis- 
tance, the cave where the Virgin hved for some days after her reco- 
very, and where, her milk becoming deficient, she mixed the lime of 
the sides with water, and so by drinking it, obtained a supply; and 
then other caves where she had lived. As to these grottoes which are 
supposed to have been the scene of most of the sacred events, Maun- 
drell has some remarks which may suffice, once for all. 

"I cannot forbear to mention in this place," says Maundrell, "an ob- 
servation which is very obvious to all who visit the Holy Land, viz., 
that almost all passages and histories related in the gospels are repre- 
sented by them that undertake to show where everything w^as done, as 
having been done most of them in grottoes; and that, even in such cases 
w^here the condition and circumstances of the actions themselves seem 
to require places of another nature. Thus, if you would see the place 
where St. Anne was delivered of the blessed Virgin, you are carried to 
a grotto; if the place of the Annunciation, it is also a grotto; if the place 
where the blessed Virgin saluted Elizabeth — if that of the Baptist's or 
our Saviour's Nativity — if that of the agony, or that of St. Peter's re- 
pentance, or that where the Apostles made the creed, or this of the 
Transfiguration — all these places are also grottoes. And, in a w^ord, 
w^herever you go, you find almost everything is represented as done 
"underground. Certainly, grottoes were anciently held in great esteem, 
or else they could never have been assigned, in spite of all probability, 
for the places in which were done so many various actions. Perhaps 
it was the hermit-way of living in grottoes, from the fifth century down- 
wards, that has brought them ever since to be in so great reputation." 
That this hermit-way of living is the antecedent of the fact, there can 
be little doubt; but the practice and the fact certainly existed before 
the time of the Empress Helena, for she was shown holy grottoes, just 
as we were. Of coarse, the Innocents were buried in grottoes too. 
We were shown in this crypt, an altar under which some of them were 
laid. 

When we went to look abroad from the convent garden, we were be- 
set by Bethlehemites asking alms, or offering for sale mother-of-pearl 



JERUSALEM. 



387 



shells, carved with Nativity subjects ; and bowls, inkstands, &c., made 
of some black substance which the people declared to be the hardened 
mud of the Jordan. When we escaped from these people, it was very 
interesting- to look out over the valley, so famJliar to Ruth and David ; 
and there was one spot, under the eastern hill, an inclosure planted 
with olives, which the friars declared to be the field where the shep- 
herds were abiding v/hen they heard the announcement of "peace on 
earth, and good will to men." 

The friars are cheerful, kind-hearted people. We saw them giving 
dinner to the boys of the convent, who were merrily enjoying an abun- 
dant meal. We left them some time before noon, to proceed first to the 
Convent of St. Elias, on the hill before us. We passed the tomb of 
Rachel, and entered the Convent of St. Elias, where there was nothing 
to see but the ordinary decorated altar, with the ordinary wretched pic- 
tures over it — in this case, of Elijah and Ehsha. Outside, however, 
there was something really interesting. Looking eastwards, we caught 
our first view of the Dead Sea, whose blue waters showed themselves 
in an interval of the hills. 

Soon after, we saw, on the opposite northern ridge, a line of walls 
which looked so insignificant that some of our company were unaware 
at first what it was. Mr. E. said to me, "You know that is Jerusalem." 
I was not disappointed, as some were ; for I knew that the most impos- 
ing first view was from the north, and the least from the south. Still, it 
was now a mere line of wall; and next, only a single dome appeared 
above it. But presently, when we could overlook the valley which lay 
between us and it, it became very striking; and soon, it exceeded all 
my expectations. The depth and steepness of Mount Zion now ap- 
peared; and it was not wonderful that the people of Jebus sent that 
scornful message to King David,* that their lame and blind should de- 
fend their fort against him. Next, we were struck with the depth of 
the ravines of Siloam and Hinnom, and their clustering red rocks; and 
then, there was the long vast slope of Olivet beyond. From the valley, 
we ascended a winding, steep, rocky road, which was to lead us in by 
the Jaffa gate. I was on foot, and lagged behind, that I might not lose 
by disturbance any feature of the scene. But I believe no one spoke. 
We all felt that it was such a moment as we should never knov/ again. 
The black cupola of the tomb of David was conspicuous; and above 
all, the great dome and surrounding buildings of the Mosque of Omar, 
crowning the summit of Moriah, where ancient pilgrims used to see 
the glittering roof of the temple. The hill of Moriah is so much lower 
than Zion as to surprise those who had read that there was once a 
height of 480 feet from the Temple walls to Kedron running below; a 
visible proof, if true, of the loftiness of Mount Zion. Of course, the Val- 
ley of Jehoshaphat, with Kedron in its depths, was hidden from us by 
the intervening city and heights ; but we saw more and more of Olivet, 
swelling up and away beyond the city and the ravines. The Convent 
of the Ascension was conspicuous on its summit; and lower down, the 



* 2 Samuel V. 6. 8. 



388 



EASTERN LIFE. 



chapel on the spot where Jesus sat when he uttered the doom of the 
city. 

We entered by the Jaffa gate, and wound through steep, narrow, ill- 
paved streets, w^here the echo of the horses' feet between the high walls 
struck upon the ear, through all the beating of the heart which told us 
that we were in Jerusalem. 



CHAPTER II. 

ELEIMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE HEBREWS AT THE 
TUIE OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 

Before going in search of the haunts of Jesus, it seems to me desir- 
able to review, however slightly, the progress which religion had made 
since the great events which dated from Sinai. This necessary in 
giving a faithful account of my travels, because I found,. it indispensa- 
ble on the spot to the true understanding of my journey. In order to 
see the scene of the life of Jesus at all with his eyes, it was necessary 
to understand, as far as possible, his knowledge and his views: and in 
order to understand these, it was indispensable to consider what were 
the elements of the religious life of the time. If I could convey any 
idea of the advantage, in this point of view, of studying, first Egypt, 
and then the Sinai peninsula, instead of going straight from the theo- 
logical atmosphere of home into the sacred places of Palestine, I can- 
not but think that much irreverent dogmatism, and much idolatrous su- 
perstition would be recognized for what they are, and would give place 
to ideas and a temper more befitting the disciples of Jesus. We all 
know something of the beneficent power of knowledge at home, though 
our knowledge there can be derived only from books. We all know, 
in ourselves, or by observation of others, how entirely superstitious, 
and therefore how nearly worthless is our religion, as long as we igno- 
rantly suppose that all the events and arrangements narrated in the Bi- 
ble are perfecdy singular : a state of things ordained, down to the mi- 
nutest particulars, for the sake of the "peculiar people," and in no re- 
spects paralleled elsewhere : and then, how the value of our faith rises, 
and our character of mind rises with it, when divines worthy of their 
office, and other learned instructors, show us how the religion arose, 
and passed " from strength to strength," among circumstances and ar- 
rangements which were common to all men of the time and region. 
When it opens upon the young student that a part of the earliest tradi- 
tions in Genesis are of Egyptian origin ; and that the covenant of cir- 
cumcision was not with Abraham alone, but that the rite was practised 
from a time unknown by all the Orientals, excepting only the Philistines; 
and that tliough the Law originated with Moses, after an Egyptian 
model, and therefore bore his name, it was, in its full extent, the work 
of many centuries ; and that the books, commonly called of Moses, 
were therefore not written by him, nor ever asserted or assumed in 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



389 



early days to be so, whatever amount of the material of them might 
have been furnished by him ; and that the calf-idol, and the sacrifices, 
and feast-days, and the structure of the tabernacle, were of Egyptian 
derivation ; and that the practice of carrying a tabernacle was not pecu- 
liar to the Hebrews, and so on : — when the young student learns these 
things from religious scholars and their works at liome, he finds, if he 
be ingenuous, a strong light cast upon his faith, as well as an immense 
relief afforded to his religious affections. He is set free from perplex- 
ity and superstition about the apparatus employed in the conveyance 
of religious ideas, and he is at liberty for the contemplation of the ideas 
themselves, and for admiration of the process by which the loftiest and ho- 
liest influences which have operated on the human race have issued from 
the ordinary circumstances and habitudes of life. For one instance, he ho- 
nors Moses infinitely more for having transcended " the wisdom of the 
Egyptians," and dared to lay open their mysteries, while employing 
for his purposes the religious associations which the Hebrews had de- 
rived from th n, than if it had been true, as the ignorant naturally and 
perniciously suppose, that the apparatus and external arrangements were 
as essential a part of the Mosaic religion as the doctrine that Jehovah was 
the sole God of the Hebrews. Apart from the apparatus, and only passing 
through the ritual to the minds of the people, how sublime is the doc- 
trine ! But how it sinks when it is supposed to be given on the same 
terms with devices about the red heifer and the shew-bread, and the 
priests' garments, and the fringes and rings of the tabernacle ! 

In the same manner, but in an immeasurably higher degree, is the 
progressive faith of the Hebrews, and that of the first Christians, en- 
hanced by the lights which travel concentrates upon the spot of their 
origin and expansion. Books of Biblical scholarship, — those which 
are the work of free and enlightened and earnest minds, — are a great 
blessing at home; — the greatest, except the Book itself: and, more- 
over, they are an indispensable preparative for the benefits of travel: 
but, as instructors, how low they sink while one is contemplating an 
Egyptian tomb, or looking abroad from the heights of Horeb ! The 
monumental volumes of Egypt teach in a day what can never be 
learned in libraries at home : and in the Desert, "Truth springs out of 
the earth, and righteousness looks down from the heaven" which over- 
hangs Sinai. And these lights accumulated as we went; and we found 
what it was to carry our Egyptian associations into the Desert ; and 
thence, enriched again by the fruits of the Wandering, into Palestine. 
As, in Palestine, our main interest is its being the abode of Jesus, I 
gave comparatively little attention to any mere localities of more an- 
cient events, but endeavored to carry clearly in my mind the religious 
history of the Hebrews up to the time of Christ, in order to a better under- 
standing of his own, and a more thorough realization of his presence 
in the haunts which, for his sake, we sought. A brief retrospect of 
that kind here is necessary to a faithful account of what we saw. 

The first thing evident in the history, after the arrival of the He- 
brews in the Promised Land, is the utter apparent failure for the time 
of their leader's aim and hope for them. His hope had been, and the 



390 



EASTERN LIFE. 



aim of their Desert life, to keep them pure from Egyptian popular su- 
perstitions on the one hand, and the planetary worship of Canaan on 
the other: but they were subject to both for some centuries after their 
arrival in Palestine ; — avowedly till the completion of the Law, and 
the full establishment of the ritual after the time of Josiah ; and uncon- 
sciously, in several doctrines and many habits of thought, to the very 
last. The golden calf at Sinai was not the only one by very many. 
Jehovah was still considered, at times if not always, the chief God of 
the Hebrews ; and this pre-eminence was asserted by the consecration 
of golden calves to him exclusively, which indicated him to be the 
Amun, or king of the gods to this semi-Egyptian people. These calves 
were set up at Dan and Bethel, and on many a high place between, 
in the time of Jeroboam, — three generations after the day when David 
brought the ark into Jerusalem, bidding its gates be lifted up, that the 
King of Glory might come in. — And as for the Planetary idolatry, the 
people not only fell, immediately after their arrival, into the worship 
of the oriental Apollo and Diana, but the horses of the Sun, and cha- 
riots of the Sun, were set up as consecrated images at the very en- 
trance of the House of Jehovah, up to the time of Josiah.* 

Another failure was as to the design of Moses to have but one place 
of general worship. For this purpose, he had made one tabernacle ; 
and, as he hoped, secured unity of object of worship by giving them 
the Ark. But, while the Ark remained at Kirjath-jearim, there were 
many places where the priests set up altars of sacrifice, and officiated 
at them : and this went on long after David's great act of taking Jebus, 
and enclosing and building upon Mount Zion, and bringing in the ark 
to sanctify his royal city. How painful it is to this hour to remember 
that generations after David had sung his exulting praises of Zion and 
the sanctuary, in strains which fire the coldest hearts among us, his 
people should have been sacrificing in preference to the Sun and Moon, 
or consulting the oracles of Jehovah at Shiloh or Nob or elsewhere, or 
bowing before little images at home, while the Temple of Jehovah, 
with the ark in its Holy Place, was set on a hill in the midst of them ! 
David would rather have been a door-keeper in that House than have 
dwelt feasting in the tents of the worshipers of the groves. Solomon's 
marriage to an Egyptian wife, and Jeroboam's residence at the court 
of Shishak, after Shishak's conquest of Jerusalem, were circumstances 
unfavorable to the Mosaic faith. The priesthood was not till long 
afterwards appropriated solely to the Levites. They might be pre- 
ferred, but they were not the only eligible persons for the office: nor 
were they restricted to serve at the central altars of Jehovah, but offi- 
ciated in private dwellings, using images. There was thus no body of 
persons at that time whose business it was to take charge of the honor 
of Jehovah and the religious interests of the people: and these depended 
mainly, therefore, on the mind and character of the king for the time 
being. Under the devout David, Jehovah was honored, and his Ark 
set on the holy hill. Under Solomon, the national God was so far 



* A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, p. 153, note. (London: Chapman.) 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



391 



honored as to have a splendid temple erected to him : but there was 
nowhere a grosser idolater than the sovereign who did this work : — a 
weak, uxorious man, who had an Egyptian wife, and concubines who 
worshiped the stars. — As there was at that time no exclusively Levi- 
tical priesthood to take charge of the national religion, nor any effectual 
centralization of worship, so there were, as far as we can learn, no 
imperative and universal observances. There was certainly no due 
observation of the Sabbatical year, nor of the Passover. It appears 
that the Passover was never known to have been celebrated till after 
the first propounding of the complete Law, in the time of Josiah.* 
Two centuries and a half after the reign of Rehoboam, the people 
were worshiping the brazen serpent; — one of the commonest objects 
of pagan idolatry. Hezekiah " brake it in pieces ;" " for unto those 
days the children of Israel did burn incense to it."t In short, there 
was, till the days of Josiah, no centralization by which the people 
could be kept steady to any belief or practice: and they, being what 
they were, and in the midst of such a world as lay about them, could 
be kept in any degree of order by no other means. 

When Moses had been first compelled to lower his aspirations for 
them, and to give them, instead of moral commandments, a ritual from 
which might emanate a moral influence, he had done all that they were 
then capable of receiving. He probably saw, what some of the wise 
now believe, that the fatal fault of the most refined Egyptian religion, — 
the religion of the Mysteries, — was that it was too much a worship of 
the Mind, and too little of the Heart: and most strenuous were his 
eff'orts so to reveal God to the Hebrews as to fix on Him their hope 
and fear, and, as a national god, their trust and love. His own self- 
devotion appears to show that the heart-element did lie in the faith he 
propounded; and what it expanded to when it met with such a soul as 
David's, his divine songs fully show. But there were not among the 
Hebrews many such hearts as David's, — quickened and expanded as 
his was by his glorious faculty of Imagination and its kindred powers: 
and the appeals of pagan worship to their passions were too much for 
their forces of either mind or heart. Under its permanent seductions, 
drawing them incessantly out of the path of allegiance and sobriety, 
there was needed some stronger central attraction and established com- 
pulsion than for some ages existed. With no records but floating 
traditions, and perhaps scattered documents; with no exclusive and 
limited priesthood, no compulsory celebrations which should include 
them all, no one spot solely consecrated to sacrifice and worship, and 
no pretence at last of preserving purity of race, it is no wonder that 
" every man did that which was right in his own eyes ;" and that many 
eyes were much in the dark about what it was right to do. The con- 
fusion and demoralization were perhaps worst in the times of the 
Judges. In the kingly institution a centralizing influence might seem 
to have been found; though the wise Samuel was too clear-sighted to 
think so. — A king supported by a priestly caste, as in the Egyptian 



* 2 Kings XXIII. 21—23. 



f 2 Kings XVIII. 4. 



392 



EASTERN LIFE. 



theocracy, was powerful for the objects needed now : but the Hebrew 
theocracy was one which did not admit of sucli a Priest-king as the 
Egyptians had : and the Jewish king could act on the religious mind 
of his people only through the prestige of his civil office and his per- 
sonal qualities: and then, as the history shows, for one true worshiper, 
like David and Josiah, they had many idolaters, or intellectual men, 
like Solomon, who played fast and loose with several gods. It was 
not in the time of the Judges alone that " every man did that which 
was right in his own eyes." 

In this long interval, however, between the death of Moses and the 
great, centralization which took place in the time of Josiah, the name 
and worship of Jehovah were never lost; were never, indeed, so loftily 
honored afterwards as now. At a future time, the people became unit- 
ed in the worship of Jehovah ; but their formal homage, growing drier 
from age to age under the pressure of the priesthood, never rivaled the 
devotional sentiment of the prophets, and those whom they inspired. 
It is in no view diverging from our subject here, to give in the words 
of another a short account of the function of the Hebrew Prophets in 
the times prior to the establishment of an exclusive Levitical priesthood ; 
that is, in times when it was hoped that the guidance, by the Prophets, 
of the religious sentiment of the nation would secure its religious fidelity. 

"Ancient Polytheism," says our author,* "was always tolerant of 
collateral polytheistic systems; and he who venerated numerous deities 
was naturally ready to believe that other gods existed, unknown to him, 
yet equally deserving of worship. The pure monotheistic faiths, on 
the contrary, whether- of Zoroaster, Moses or Mohammed, have been 
all marked by an intolerance which in that stage of the world could not 
be separated from the interests of truth ; and on this cardinal point the 
unity of Israel was to depend. A noble and pure soul looked with 
disgust on the foul errors entangled with Canaanitish and Syrian super- 
stitions; and in maintaining the exclusive honor of the national god of 
Israel, — the Lord and Creator of Heaven and Earth, — was guilty of no 
such mean-spirited sectarianism as might fairly be imputed to one who 
contended for a Neptune against an Apollo, an Adonis against a Neith. 
The prophet of Jehovah was in fact striving for the pure moral attri- 
butes of God, — for holiness against impurity, majesty and goodness 
against caprice and cruelty, — for a God whose powers reached to the 
utmost limits of space and time, against gods whose being was but of 
yesterday, and whose agencies thwarted one another. Nevertheless, 
the Hebrew creed was not monotheistic, in the sense of denying the 
existence of other gods. It rather degraded them into devils, and set 
the omnipotence of Jehovah into proud contrast with their superhuman, 
yet limited might, than exploded them as utterly fabulous." 

"The prophetst must on no account be confounded with the 
* priests.'" . . . "Priests must no doubt have been all but coeval 
with the existence of the nation; and at this time they probably lived 

* A History of the Hebrew JMonarchy, p. 28. 
t IbiJ , p. 31. 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



393 



in knots at particular towns, where certain sacerdotal families happened 
to have multiplied, since the character of the priest was essentially 
hereditary. His business was one of routine, — to sacrifice, or to burn 
incense; to light lamps, to offer shew-bread, or perform some other of 
the ceremonies with which ancient religion abounded. It is a striking 
fact, that during all Samuel's administration, no one ventured to remove 
the Ark from Kirjath-jearim ; nor do the priests seem to have been 
concerned to take charge of it. But'^/ie men of Kirjath-jearim sancti- 
fied Eleazer, son of Abinadab, to keep the Ark of Jehovah;' and under 
the care of the same house it is found in the beginning of David's reign 
at Jerusalem (2 Samuel vi. 3). This, however, is but one out of 
numerous proofs that the ceremonial system was one which very gra- 
dually grew up, and was as yet exceedingly immature. — Except where 
lands had been attached to some sanctuary, the priest must have lived 
by the sacrifices and other offerings, and only in very rare cases exer- 
cised, or sought to exercise, any influence which can be called spiritual. 
But no man became a prophet by birth: he needed some call for the 
office, with exercise and teaching ; nor did the prophets often concern 
themselves with mere ceremonies, although they occasionally intro- 
duced symbolic actions of their own, suited to impress the public senses. 
Their characteristic emblem was some musical instrument, and their 
highest function to compose and sing solemn psalms of religious worship 
or instruction. Unlike to the Minstrel of the Greeks, who devoted his 
powers to flatter chieftains and amuse the crowd ; or to the later lyrist, 
who composed laudatory odes for pecuniary recompense ; — more like 
in some respects to a patriotic Tyrtfeus, or to a Welsh bard; — the 
Hebrew prophet differed essentially in this, that his first and great aim 
was to please and honor God, in faith that from obedience to Him the 
highest good of man would assuredly follow." 

The time arrived when these spiritual leaders, the Prophets, gave 
place to the Priests ; an order of men of whom nothing has been thus 
far told which leads us to believe that they were of great importance as 
a caste. Their genealogy was not pure : they were dispersed about 
the country, serving at difierent altars, and even in private families. 
During the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, they lived side by side with the 
priests of Baal, against whom the prophets wrought to their utter de- 
struction. It was a remarkable state of things when Elijah was at 
Mount Carmel, ordaining the slaughter of the priests of Baal at the 
river Kishon, and the priests of Jehovah Avere living quietly at Jeru- 
salem, seeing the temples of the two gods standing within view of each 
other, and themselves associating with the priests of the Sun. It v/as 
in the time of Athaliah, as we all know, that this state of things came 
to an end. It was then that Jehoiada put down at once the queen and 
the false god, and established the priesthood in that position which it 
thenceforward maintained, whenever the nation held up its head. — 
There is no need to say anything here of the Hebrew priestliood; for 
almost everything that has been said of the Egyptian will answer as an 
exact description. When it became a Levitical priesthood, a heredi- 
tary caste, including all the higher professions, and subsisting by exclu- 



394 



EASTERN LIFE. 



sive intermarriage, it was altogether Egyptian, except that it was not 
necessary that the king should be chosen out of this caste, or should 
pass through it. — Up to this time, and yet more remarkably afterwards, 
there was constant and abundant intercourse between the Hebrews and 
Egypt. Whether the monarchs were at war or in alliance, whether 
the Egyptians came up against Jerusalem, or to march through into 
Assyria, they were often in Palestine ; and there seems to have been a 
pretty constant influx of Jews into Egypt, till they had, as we know, 
five cities, and a great Temple to Jehovah in the very place where 
Moses had sat to learn of the priests of Egypt. It is no wonder, there- 
fore, that the Egyptian and Jewish priesthoods bore an almost exact 
resemblance to each other, nor that we find everywhere Egyptian 
elements in the faith and philosophy of the Hebrews. 

It is believed by the learned, that during two centuries and a half 
after the full assumption of power by the priesthood under Jehoiada, 
the four first books of the Pentateuch were probably compiled from 
existing documents and other means of knowledge; and that, finally, 
the book of Deuteronomy was written, and brought out with the others, 
in the time of Josiah,* to work the greatest change in the religious 
condition of the Hebrews, which had happened since they left Mount 
Sinai. The books of the Law were then found in the Ark; in the 
Ark which is declared to have been empty at preceding dates ; and a 
multitude of particulars in the books themselves prove, as biblical scho- 
lars have shown, that they could not have been reduced to their pre- 
sent form before the dates here assigned. For the consternation of 
King Josiah, and the sensation excited among the people by the denun- 
ciations against idolatry — especially the prevalent idolatry of the coun- 
try — we need only refer to the history. Our business with the event 
is to mark its efiect on the Religious Thought of the nation. 

From this time, the Hebrews became much more steady in their al- 
legiance to Jehovah. They had now a recognized caste, to take charge 
of their religious concerns ; an established ritual, which occupied their 
thoughts and feelings, and trained them in habits of observance; and 
they had a central place of meeting — a type of unity — before their 
eyes. But under this system, though idolatrous vagaries were re- 
pressed, the religious life of the people died out; as religious vitality 
ever does die out from the hour when it becomes the charge of a priest- 
hood. From this time, till Christ arose to free it from its trammels, 
and revive its life, the religious sentiment of the nation wasted away 
under the bondage of the Law, the formality of the priesthood, and the 
sectarianism which inevitably springs up where the administration of 
religion is appropriated by any body of men. This was the great cri- 
sis in the mind of the Hebrew people — whatever crises remained for 
their fortunes. Between the Exodus and the coming of Christ, there 
was no other point of time which so affected their religious state. Hi- 
therto they had hovered among the idolatries of the surrounding na- 
tions, and had largely intermingled with some of them by marriage ; 



* A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, oh. ix. 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



395 



SO that for centuries they had been a mongrel people. Now, all this 
was changed. The Prophets had almost died out; the Priests and 
Levites had risen ; the Law included the whole people within a well- 
guarded fold ; and henceforth they were to be " a peculiar people," as 
exclusive as they had hitherto been vagrant and careless. In this ex- 
clusiveness they immediately began to harden ; and what point of hard- 
ness, of pride, and legality of worship they had reached by the time 
of Christ's coming, his history shows. 

Now that there was a Law — a complete, tangible, recorded Law — 
that body of men called Lawyers arose. Before this time, they were 
never heard of. Now they began to study, interpret, and expound the 
Law, and, in proportion as the nation became consolidated, they rose 
to fill the important place which they held when Christ stood in the 
Temple, six centuries after this consolidation of written memorials, and 
perhaps oral tradition, from the time of Moses downwards, into a sys- 
tem of statute Law. This origin of Rabbinism seems to have as much 
connection with Egypt as the origin of the Hebrew faith, ritual and litera- 
ture. As the author of the history above quoted says,* "Ever since 
the reign of Uzziah, the intercourse with Egypt had been steadily on 
the increase ; and the colonies of Jews and Israelites there were so 
considerable, that the absentees in Egypt, and the exiles in Assyria, 
are often spoken of in one breath, (which, indeed, we have seen in 
Isaiah,) as though co-ordinate and almost commensurate. Although 
Egyptian art, perhaps, was sinking, Egyptian learning must have been 
at its height in Isaiah's day; and wealthy Jews established in that 
country, where all the trials before a judge are said to have gone on in 
writing, would necessarily gain more definite ideas of the value of a 
complete written body of statutes accessible to all. Communication 
with the exiles in the cultivated cities of Assyria, must have had the 
same tendency." Here again we have that conjunction which, in re- 
gard to religious matters, Moses so dreaded, and from which dread he 
made of his people a Desert tribe for so long — the intermingling of the 
Hebrews with the Egyptians on the one hand, and their eastern neigh- 
bors on the other ; and, according to our author, the Thought of these 
different peoples was probably infused into the Law of the Hebrews, 
no less than into their faith and their traditions. He says,t " In the new 
school there must have been very various minds ; some disposed to 
heathenism and Egyptian mysteries, others simple as Moses ; yet all 
eager for Levitical aggrandizement." 

As it is the religious life of the nation that we are now glancing back 
upon, it is not necessary to say more of the Captivity, than that when 
the Remnant returned, they immediately placed themselves under their 
own Law and ordinances, under the protection of Persia. They sought 
their old homes, on their arrival, and provided necessaries for their fa- 
milies, and then, a month after their return, assembled at Jerusalem, 
reared an altar among the ruins of the " beautiful House" which So- 

* A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, p. 319. 
t Ibid., p. 319. 



396 



EASTERN LIFE. 



lomon bad built, offered sacrifices, and kept the feast of Tabernacles. 
Then followed the rebuilding of the Temple, and the return of Ezra, 
the priest and scribe, to look to the thorough re-establishment of the 
Law and Worship of his people. He annulled the marriages with hea- 
thens which had taken place during the interval of uncertainty and de- 
pression ; and almost before his work of ecclesiastical purification was 
completed, Nehemiah arrived to look to the rebuilding of the walls of 
Jerusalem. While Nehemiah was superintending this work, Ezra 
finished his revisal of the sacred books, and settled the Old Testament 
canon. He changed the text from the old Hebrew to the Chaldee, 
which was now more intelligible to the people.* The Samaritans not 
choosing to adopt the change, the old character was henceforth called 
the Samaritan text. The language itself having become strange to the 
returned Jews, they needed an interpretation; and in order to give them 
one, that solemn public reading was held which is recorded in the 8th 
chapter of Nehemiah, when Ezra the Scribe and his coadjutors " read 
in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused 
them to understand the reading." 

And now occurs a very interesting period in the religious life of the 
Jews : — the rise of the sect of the Pharisees. At what time precisely 
they became a sect, there is no saying now. Josephus, who was one 
of them, only knew that they existed long before his time. They cer- 
tainly arose after the promulgation of the law ; and probably very soon 
after ; their particular function, — of delivering the oral law, — being in- 
dicated by the written law coming into common use. The main doc- 
trine of the Pharisees was that Aaron had handed down an oral law, 
and set of traditions, to accompany the written law: and that the tra- 
ditions were the more important and valuable of the two, and to be 
used for the interpretation of the written law. As they professed to 
hold these traditions, there would have been hardly any limits to their 
power, if their claims had been fully and universally admitted — as we 
know they were not. There were balancing sects ; and we see in 
the denunciations, both of the Baptist and of Jesus, how the Pharisees 
were regarded by those who were reared in, or inclined towards, the 
principles of a different sect. — The Pharisaic body including men of 
education only, it is natural that some of its doctrines should be of 
foreign derivation. They were the " bibliolators" of the Jews, sacri- 
ficing the spirit and meaning to the letter of their sacred records ; and 
building up on every phrase of this letter a structure of arbitrary mean- 
ings which made the record " of none effect." Some of their materials 
for commentary was derived from the Egyptians, and some from the 
Greeks (who derived their opinions from Egypt) and some from the 
East. Their Pythagorean doctrines about death and the soul were, as 
we have before said in connection with Pythagoras himself, coincident 
with those of the Egyptians. They believed in the abode of the dead 
in Hades ; in the immediate and eternal damnation of the souls of the 
desperately wicked ; and in the transmigration of all other souls. They 



* Palestine, Kitto, p. 653. 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



397 



believed in a partial necessity; enough to authorize their doctrine of a 
providence; but so partial as to permit them to punish heretical opinion 
severely, while they visited moral crime but lightly. Such is the ac- 
count given by Josephus the Pharisee. They believed in the existence 
of angels, good and bad ; and agreed with the Egyptians in the asser- 
tion that the chief of the good angels, — the first of the sons of the Su- 
preme, was uncreated, and capable of manifestation on earth, for bene- 
ficent objects. This was evidently the Osiris of the Egyptians, the 
Logos of the Platonists, and the Second Person of the Trinity set forth 
by the Platonizing Christians in a later age. They believed in bad 
angels as well as good, and perpetuated that doctrine of a power of evil 
which in their time had been imported from other faiths, in direct oppo- 
sition to the purer doctrine taught by Isaiah, xlv. 7. Their great re- 
maining tenet was truly and exclusively Jewish ; that Jehovah was so 
bound to his people as that he could not condemn nor forsake them, 
but was obliged to grant them a Messiah, and eternal prosperity.— As 
for their practical life, they were likened, as Josephus tells us. to the 
Stoics: and they professed extreme and exalted virtue: but, by means 
of their oral law, there was always an escape for those who desired 
one; and the result seems to have been that while the most ostenta- 
tious and conspicuous of the Pharisees were disagreeable and danger- 
ous from their sanctimoniousness and legal morality, the majority of 
them were much like other people, — good or bad more in proportion 
to their natural constitution and position than through the abstract doc- 
trines they held. That they held such docrines is, however, a matter 
of the highest interest to us. That there were humble and teachable 
Pharisees is as certain as that there are proud and selfish Christians, 
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and other men who could stoop 
to learn, were Pharisees. — Dr. Kitto, after speaking of their temper and 
conduct, observes,* " Of their doctrines, as far as they went, and as far 
as they are noticed, Christ and his apostles appear to have thought more 
favorably — or, at least, they are much preferred to the opposite doctrine 
of the Sadducees." 

In opposition to the Pharisees, — the Traditionists, — arose the sect 
of the Anti-traditionists, the Sadducees, whose doctrines are soon told, 
as their profession consisted chiefly of negations. They denied the 
existence of any spiritual beings but Jehovah himself, and therefore the 
future existence of man. It is noticeable that in this, and in its neces- 
sary consequence, their inexorable punishment of moral off'ences, they 
were primitive Hebrews, — close followers of Moses. And they strictly 
adhered to the recorded law, rejecting traditions altogether. They held 
the doctrine of free-will to its utmost extent, which indeed was neces- 
sary under their practice of inexorable retribution. The date of the 
rise of this sect is not more clearly known than that of the Pharisees: 
but it is evident that the doctrines of the Sadducees had a large inter- 
mixture from the Greek: and they were held by the literary and tra- 
veled men of the Hebrew aristocracy : by those who were most likely 



* Palestine, p. 719. 



398 



EASTERN LIFE. 



to be conversant with Greek writings, and witli such strangers from 
that country as occasionally visited Jerusalem. It was they who car- 
ried some Greek elements into the deliberations of the Sanhedrim, 
where they were the most powerful party in the time of Christ, and 
into the administration of the priestly office ; for Caiaphas and Ananias, 
high priests, were Sadducees. Though they were more primitive 
Mosaists than the Pharisees, they were not more acceptable to Jesus. 
Their aristocratic tendencies, their skepticism and pride of intellect, 
and their corrupting doctrine of free-will, were all diametrically opposed 
to the views and aspirations of one who came to offer his glad tidings 
to the poor, — to give rest to the souls of the weary and heavy laden, — 
and to teach that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the ordina- 
tion of God ; — of one, in short, whose sympathies were with the re- 
maining sect, — the Essenes. 

It is impossible to enter philosophically in any degree into the mind 
of Christ, without considering how large an element of his thought 
was the life and doctrine of the Essenes. When we read of them in 
Josephus and Philo, we see reflected back as in a mirror the life of the 
gospel, or, at least, the idea of that life which was held by the early 
Christians. The Sermon on the Mount might be taken as one long 
blessing on the Essenes, — the non-resistants, the abjurers of property, 
the humble, the mortified, the industrious, the charitable ! The lead- 
ing object — the central purpose — of the Essenes was that of fulfilling 
the Moral Ideal of the Law. While the Pharisees were allegorizing, 
and heaping traditions upon the original structure of the Mosaic sys- 
tem, and the Sadducees were rigidly preserving and adhering to the 
simplicity of that structure, the Essenes gave their whole mind to the 
ascertainment and realization of its moral import. There is no doubt 
that they added much to the meaning of Moses, and saw many moral 
principles and practices in his system which he never put there: and it 
is clear that their additions were derived from Egypt and Greece. There 
was a close affinity between them and the Pythagoreans who resorted to 
Egypt in great numbers, when their schools in Europe were broken 
up. The Essene communities in Egypt and Palestine, between which 
a brotherly intercourse was always going on, were mainly Pythagorean 
in their discipline, and in their mysteries ; and so remarkably Chris- 
tian in their moral doctrine and practices, that it was long supposed 
that Philo, giving an account of the Egyptian Essenes, was a Christian 
giving an account of a Christian community. There is no question, 
however, of their prosperous existence for some centuries before the 
birth of Christ. Their societies undoubtedly formed the model of the 
first Christian communities, and of subsequent monastic associations. 
They held their goods in common, forbidding a man to have two 
cloaks or two staves, and not allowing him to be in want of one. 
They were in the strictest sense Necessarians, going far beyond the 
Pharisees in this particular, and not being exceeded by the Moham- 
medans themselves. They believed that the hairs of men's heads were 
all numbered, and that every moment of their thoughts was determined 
by an immutable providence. They held that men are truly and prac- 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



399 



tically brethren, under the Paternity of God: a most memorable 
advance upon the morality of the then existing world. They refused 
to call any man Master upon earth, denouncing slavery, and discounte- 
nancing every kind of servitude. They ordered obedience to the civil 
power, but no participation in it. All political action was discounte- 
nanced ; and absolute non-resistance, giving the cheek to the smiter 
rather than raising the hand, was inculcated. With this went unli- 
mited forgiveness of injuries. They might have had for their motto 
that glorious text of the Kuran, " To endure and to pardon is the wis- 
dom of life." They taught that the best temper for man consisted in 
three affections: Love of God; love of the Truth, and love of Man: 
and that the best employments of man corresponded to these : viz., 
contemplation, and healing the bodies and souls of men. Hence the 
name of Therapeutag, which they bore in Egypt. They called them- 
selves, and were called by others. Physicians of bodies and souls. 
While abstaining from marriage themselves, as a matter of expediency, 
they opened their arms to children, out of love to them for their purity, 
as well as compassion for their helplessness. They might have in- 
scribed over their doors the words, " Suffer the little children to come 
unto us, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of heaven :" 
and the children did go to them, and were taken in and cherished, as 
were the hungry and the naked, and the sick and miserable. They 
reprobated oaths, and practised the utmost plainness of speech, think- 
ing that all exaggerations of their Yea and Nay came of evil. — Another 
primary point with them was strictness of truth: — their Yea was yea, 
and their Nay nay.* 

In estimating the religious elements of Jewish life before the time of 
Christ, it is impossible not to be struck with the coincidences between 
the life and doctrine of the Essenes and the life and doctrine of Jesus: 
and further, when we read his rebukes of the other two sects, and ob- 
serve that he nowhere denounces any practice of the Essenes, while 
incessantly preaching their views of truth, and inculcating their mo- 
rality, it is clear that they enjoyed his favor. In the opinion of learned 
men,t there is much evidence to show that the Baptist was an Essene 
of the anchorite order, " being in the deserts till the time of his show- 
ing unto Israel.":}: There were two orders in the body of the Essenes ; 
the contemplative and the practical. The contemplative were the Jew- 
ish anchorites in Egypt, who retired to caves and fastnesses while 
Cambyses ravaged the valley of the Nile ; and who afterwards were 
the models of the Christian hermits who were sprinkled among the 
desert rocks of Egypt. Of this order it is that John was supposed to 
be, with his desert dress and food. — The other order lived, as has been 
said, in community, employed in works of charity as well as in con- 
templation. The Essenes of Palestine are declared by Josephus to 
have been of this second order; and their chief establishment was on 
the western shore of the Dead Sea : — that is, in the neighborhood of 

* Philo, De Vita Contemplativa. Josephus, Antiq, Book XVIII. ch. 2. 
t See Taylor in Calmet, " Dictionary to tlie Bible." J Luke I. 80. 



400 



EASTERN LIFE, 



the Baptist's home, — " in the hill country of Judea." — Jesus was for 
some time a disciple of John, with evidently no thought, at that period, 
of a higher destiny for himself. From this, from the celibacy of both, 
(otherwise a fault and reproach among the Jews,) from the omission 
of all rebuke of this sect alone, and from his incessant promulgation of 
the Essene doctrine and morality, it appears that those scholars are 
probably right who believe that Jesus received, like thousands of the 
Jewish youth of his day, his training from the Essenes. The number 
of the professed Essenes at that time was four thousand in Palestine; 
and these were the teachers of a multitude of the next generation. In 
Egypt, the sect was much larger. 

There is no need to point out the faults and dangers of the 
Essene institutions. They were the same as are found in all forms of 
monastic life, and all schemes of mystical religion. While admiring 
the singular beauty (so endeared to us by our Christian associations,) 
of their principles of worship, affection and action, we see in their 
celibacy and other asceticism, and their uniform rule of life for all 
comers, the same liabilities and errors as belong to monastic life every- 
where, under all systems of faith. In the somewhat ascetic, and en- 
tirely non-resistant character which the Glad Tidings of Jesus derived 
from this element of their origin, we certainly see the prophecy of the 
rise of Mohammedanism in the world, and its temporary spread to a 
wider extent than its parent Christianity : but we are at the same time 
struck with the glorious liberality of those Glad Tidings, and their 
exemption from all the errors and extravagances which were incorpo- 
rated with the Essene scheme and its workings. 

During the infancy and growth of all these sects, political events 
succeeded one another, of such a kind, and in such an order, as to 
bring a great accession of ideas to the Jewish mind, and cause a wide 
association with the minds of other countries. 

Alexander the Great came, after his destruction of Tyre, (b. c. 332,) 
to chastise Jerusalem, because the High Priest had pleaded his oath of 
allegiance to Darius. He was met on the heights of Sapha, within 
view of Jerusalem, by the High Priest and a long train of attendant 
priests, and citizens in white garments, who came forth to set before 
the conqueror the claims and the threats of Jehovah: and then, as the 
history tells,* he did what he afterwards did when a similar train met 
him from Memphis : — he went out to meet the High Priest Jaddua, 
and adored the Name inscribed on his mitre, declaring to his Greek 
attendants that what he worshiped was not the minister of Jehovah, 
but the great God whom he represented. And here, as afterwards in 
honor of Amun, he sacrificed in honor of the Supreme God, and se- 
cured to the people the enjoyment of their own laws and their accus- 
tomed privileges. Parmenio was by his side ; and many Greek phi- 
losophers and learned men in his train, who freely associated with the 
higher classes of the Jews. — And then ensued that period of Egyptian 
protection, — sixty years of repose while the Jews paid tribute to the 



* Josephus, Antiq. XL, S. 4, 5. 



HEBREW FAITH AT THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. 



401 



Ptolemies, and had unrestricted intercourse with the Egyptian priest- 
hood, and liberty to dwell, and build, and worship, at Alexandria and 
Heliopolis,— -which had great effect in enlarging the minds of the Jew- 
ish sects, and abolishing their nationality of thought and feeling. At 
this time, the prevalence of Greek proper names in Jewish families 
shows how intimate was the intercourse of those two nations. As Dr. 
Kitto observes,* " there is ample evidence that the more opulent classes 
cultivated the language, and imbibed some of the manners of the Greeks. 
It is also apparent that some acquaintance with the Greek philosophers 
was obtained, and made wild work in Jewish minds." — And afterwards 
came the dread power of Rome, to lay waste Jerusalem by its agents, 
the generals of Antiochus, when, on a certain memorable Sabbath, the 
streets of Jerusalem flowed with blood, and the most awful of all events 
happened, — the suspension of the daily sacrifice. It was in the month 
of June (b. c. 167) that this took place, and that Jerusalem was com- 
pletely deserted, the surviving inhabitants taking refuge among the 
nearest of the gentiles. The temple was then dedicated, at the com- 
mand of Antiochus, to Jupiter Olympius ; an altar to the heathen god 
was set up upon that hitherto sacred to Jehovah, and the people were 
instructed in the Greek religion by teachers sent among them for the 
purpose.t — Then arose the Asmonean family, to restore the national 
worship, and reconstitute the Jewish people. They might overthrow 
the heathen altars, and declare again the name of Jehovah ; but they 
could not drive out the Greek elements which had found their way into 
the Jewish mind, or depress the sect of the Sadducees which rose into 
a flourishing condition by means of them. The army of Judas Mac- 
cabaeus came to Mount Zion, and cast ashes on their heads when they 
saw how the temple of Jehovah lay open to the winds, and how its 
" courts were grown over with shrubs, as in the forest, or on the moun- 
tain." They might and did repair the temple; but they could not 
undo that desecration of the national mind which had taken place from 
the intrusion of the heathen. 

Then ensued the enmity between the Pharisees and the Asmonean 
princes, which, as either cause or consequence of the interference of 
that sect in public affairs,^ could not but have a great influence on reli- 
gious opinion in Palestine. The Asmonean house went over to the 
Sadducees ; and a bitter war of opinion ensued, fatal to unity of faith 
throughout the nation. — The next time we look towards the temple, 
we find Pompey in it, — intruding with his officers actually into the 
Holy of Holies. He captured it b. c. 63, on the very day kept sacred 
as a mourning fast by the Jews, as the anniversary of the conquest of 
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. This was the date of the establish- 
ment of the Roman power in Palestine. The walls of the city were 
demolished, and the Jews became tributary to Rome. 

It is observable that Egyptian worship was at this time and after- 
wards so eagerly followed in Italy, " that Augustus made a law that no 

* Kitto's Palestine, p. 674. f Ibid, pp. 685, 686. 

t Ibid., p. 705. 



26 



402 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Egyptian ceremonies should enter the city, or even the suburbs of 
Rome."* And again, it is remarkable that the Egyptian and Jewish 
faiths were classed together by the authorities at Rome. Tacitus tells 
us that " the Roman Senate made a new law (a. d. 19) against the 
Egyptian and Jewish superstitions, and banished to Sardinia four thou- 
sand men who were found guilty of being Jews."t 

Nothing is more striking to the students of these critical times of 
the world's history than the evidence of the wide intercourse of minds 
which existed in ages when we are apt to suppose that, for want of the 
art of printing, nations were shut up within themselves, and remained 
as exclusive in their characteristics of mind as of race. We should 
remember that war acted upon them almost as powerfully as commerce 
does upon us, and quite differendy from the warfare of modern times. 
It not only opened countries to each other, but brought the respective . 
citizens face to face. A colonial or other connection usually grew up 
out of war ; and the wise&t men of either country traveled in the terri- 
tory of the other; and there was frequently an exchange of citizens. 
The countries of the old world had commerce too. It did not occa- 
sion the extensive intercourse of modern times, nor intermingle ditfer- 
ent people to such a degree as war: but it wrought in its own way. 
We must also consider that if the ancients had not our extensive cir- 
culation of books, they had, on that account, far more earnestness in 
their inquiry after new ideas, and their reception of them. When 
sages and priests met face to face, from distant countries, they impressed 
one another far more deeply than we are often impressed by books ; 
and their pursuit of philosophy was much more serious than ours. It 
appears that the Jews had their full share of the advantages of foreign 
intercourses; and that they were so far from being the homogeneous 
and separate people that they are ordinarily supposed to be, that abun- 
dant foreign elements entered into their constitution, both of mind and 
race, from the time of their entrance upon the Promised Land to that 
of their final dispersion. 

It cannot be overlooked, in this review, how large was the Egyptian 
element, in comparison with every other. On every side, except the 
east, it was continually, however silently, flowing in. The Hebrew 
mind was fed by the Egyptian incessantly, throughout its whole exist- 
ence. Besides what the Jews obtained from Moses, and by all their 
direct fraternization with the Egyptians, at intervals, for many ages, the 
Egyptian mind communicated with theirs through the Greeks, the 
Syrians, and the Romans ; so that to understand their faith, their ordi- 
nances, their philosophy, their sects, their monachism, their history, 
and their literature, it is necessary to go back to Egypt for the key. 
To a certain extent, the case is the same with some other nations, — 
with the Greeks and the Etruscans especially ; but the strongest affinity 
we know of among ancient peoples was that between the Egyptians 
and the Hebrews ; and it is highly necessary not to lose sight of this 
kindred relation in exploring the mind of the Jewish people at any 
assigned period. 



* Sharpe's History of Egypt, p. 356, 



t Ibid., p. 363. 



JERUSALEM. 



403 



Herod began rebuilding the temple b. c. 17 ; and it was fit for the 
resumption of the service in b. c. 7. It was this new structure that 
Jesus and his disciples were contemplating when they spoke of its 
having been " forty and six years in building." Here it was that he 
found the Pharisees haughtily insisting on the minutiae of their ritual, 
and elaborating their Pythagorean doctrines of the soul and its pros- 
pects. Here it was that he found the Scribes expounding the law to 
those who could never hope to understand its intricacies without 
help. Here it was that he found the Sadducees contending for the 
simplicity of the primitive Law, and for that Majesty of Jehovah which 
forbade his interference with the aifairs of men. Here it was that he 
saw carried to the altar, the sacrifices sent by Essenes who would not 
personally mingle in the pomps and vanities of a ritual worship. Here 
it was that he found, brought in by the four winds, and intermingling 
like the fumes of the incense and the smoke of the sacrifice, all that the 
minds of distant nations had to offer before the sanctuary of the true 
God; the wisdom of the Egyptians, the science of the Assyrians, the 
philosophy of the Greeks, and the now strict monotheism of the He- 
brews. Here it was that he, by his god-like nature, gathered into him- 
self and assimilated all that was true, deep, noble, and endearing in this 
world-wide range of thought, and gave it forth again, in such a music 
of Glad Tidings, ringing clear under that temple roof, as that every 
heart felt, — never man spake like this man !" 



CHAPTER HI. 

JERUSALEM.— THE ENGLISH MISSION.— MOSQUE OF OMAR.— JEWS' 
PLACE OF WAILING.— VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPH AT.— GREEK FIRE. 
— DAVI^ TOMB AND C^NACULUM.— ARMENIAN CONVENT.— LE- 
PERS.— CAVE OF JEREMIAH.— ENVIRONS. 

We considered ourselves most fortunate in our lodgment at Jerusa- 
lem ; — I mean in the position of our rooms at Salvador's hotel. The 
house would not contain the whole of our party, and three went to 
lodgings. But we ladies had light airy rooms opening upon the high- 
est platform of the hotel; this platform being the roof of a lower set of 
chambers. I was never tired of gazing abroad from the parapet of our 
little terrace, from which I could command a large extent of the flat 
roofs of the city, and of its picturesque walls. The narrow, winding 
street far below, which we overlooked almost from end to end, was the 
Via Dolorosa; and it was spanned midway by the Ecce Homo arch. 
This Mournful Way, where I rarely saw any one walking, attracted 
the eye all the more from its being almost the only street we had a 
glimpse of; the streets of Eastern cities being so narrow as not to be 
visible from a height. Some few were traceable by a comparison of 
the lines of house tops, and the guidance of the minarets which sprang 
from among the roofs, tall and light as the poplar from the long grass 
of the meadow : but the only street which we could look down into 



404 



EASTERN LIFE. 



was the Via Dolorosa. Beyond the city, and directly opposite, rose 
the long slope of Olivet. It was now the time of full moon ; and even- 
ing after evening, I leaned on that parapet, watching for the coming 
up of the large yellow moon behind the ridge of the Mount of Olives. 
By day the slopes of the Mount were green with the springing wheat, 
and dappled with the shade of the Olive clumps. By night, those 
clumps and lines of trees were dark amidst the lights and shadows 
cast by the moon ; and they guided the eye, in the absence of daylight, 
to the most interesting points, the descent to the brook Kedron, the 
road to Bethany, and the place whence Jesus is said to have looked 
over upon the noble city when he pronounced its doom. 

It is still a noble city. The Jebusites certainly chose for their fort 
one of the finest sites in the world ; and when David took it from them, 
he might well glory in his beautiful Zion. From this day forward 
how dead seemed to me all my former impressions of Jerusalem ! — not 
of its sacredness, but of its beauty and nobleness. I can scarcely re- 
member the time when I did not know familiarly all its hills, and its 
gates, and its temple courts, so as to read the New Testament as with 
a plan in my head. But I never had the slightest conception of that 
beauty which now at once enabled me to enter into the exultation of 
David, and the mourning of Nehemiah, and the generous concern of 
Titus, and the pride of the Saracen, and the enthusiasm of the Cru- 
sader. The mournful love of the Holy City grew from day to day, as 
I became familiar with its precincts ; but no single view so took me by 
surprise as that which we obtained in the course of our walk this first day. 

There is a strange charm in the mere streets, from the picturesque 
character of the walls and archways. The old walls of yellow stone 
are so beautifully tufted with weeds, that one longs to paint every angle 
and projection, with its mellow coloring, and dangling and trailing gar- 
lands. And the shadowy archways, where the vaulted roofs intersect 
each other, till they are lost in the dazzle of the sunshine beyond, are 
like a noble dream. The pavement is the worst I ever walked on ; — 
worse than Cologne ; \vorse than my native city of Norwich : but being 
a native of Norwich, and having been familiar with its pavement for 
thirty years, I was not so distressed as my companions, who could 
hardly make their way in Jerusalem over the large, slippery stones, 
slanting all manner of ways. 

We found the bazaars much crowded, this first day, and abounding 
in fruits and vegetables. It was Holy Week, which accounted for the 
throng, and for the display of oranges, lemons, figs, nuts and almonds, 
pumpkins and cucumbers. The lightness of the complexions, and the 
mild beauty of the faces were very striking, after so many weeks 
among the A.rabs in the Desert. 

We were now on our way to the English church, from which we 
obtained the fine view I have alluded to. The walls of this new church 
were up, and the pillars rising ; and a spiral staircase at one corner was 
so finished as that we could mount. Some of our party exclaimed at 
the smallness of this pretty new church ; but I much doubt whether there 
will ever be Jewish converts enough to fill it. I should have supposed 
that any consideration at home of the genius of the Jewish religion, and 



THE ENGLISH MISSION. 



405 



much more on the spot, would have shown the unsoundness of the 
scheme. Those who are intimate with the minds of educated and con- 
scientious Jews are aware that such cannot be converted to Christianity; 
that the very foundation of their faith cannot support that superstruc- 
ture : that there can be, to them, no reason why they should change, 
and every conceivable reason why they should not. They well know 
that it is only the ill-grounded Jew who can be converted; the weak, 
the ignorant, or th^ needy and immoral. After all these years, the 
converts are very few ; they are not all Jews ; and there is a difficulty 
about the maintenance of even those few. There was talk, when we 
were at Jerusalem, of endeavoring to set up a House of Industry, be- 
cause the converts of course become outcasts from their own people. 
Those who withdraw these converts from their old connections, habits, 
principles and intercourses, are indeed under an obligation to supply 
them with new ; but it is to be hoped that they consider well what they 
are doing, and how tremendous a responsibility they are taking on 
themselves, as regards the morale^ as well as the fortunes of their con- 
verts. It is no light matter to subvert a man's habits of mind and life, 
to isolate him in the midst of his own city and race, and render him 
wholly dependent on his religious teachers. It should be well con- 
sidered whether the loss of the faith of his fathers, and the radical 
shaking of his own ; the exclusion from family, society, and employ- 
ment; the loss of tranquillity, and the great moral dangers of such an 
uprooting as none but a Jew can ever experience, are really compen- 
sated for by anything that the Mission at Jerusalem has hitherto found 
itself able to impart. It scarcely needs to be pointed out, in regard to 
this proposed House of Industry, that when once the Mission becomes 
an alms-house affair, before the eyes of the city — a city full of Mo- 
hammedans and Jews who already regard the Protestant Christians with 
utter contempt — there is an end to all hope of converting any but the 
alms-house order of people ; — the needy and lazy. The hospital 
of the Mission is an interesting establishment, and, to all appearance, 
well managed. If the Mission is to be a charitable institution, well and 
good, (supposing it to be proved, as a charity, worth its cost:) only let it 
be called so : that a vast expense may perhaps be saved, which is sorely 
craved by our heathens at home, who are unquestionably in a far worse 
state of spiritual destitution than the Jews in Palestine. While we 
have millions of savages in our own island — heathens without heathen 
gods — I cannot see why we should spend on a handful of strangers 
who have already a noble faith of their own, the resources which would 
support Home Missions to a much greater extent. Time will show : 
but my own persuasion is that the Jerusalem Mission cannot, from errors 
inherent in its very conception, long endure. On the Good Friday 
when we were there, five Jews — three men and two women — were 
baptized: and one of the ladies of the Mission told me that the number 
of converts was sixty in the thirteen years since the first effort was 
made. We were attended by their first convert, Abdallah, as a guide. 
He was not a Jew, but a Druse. He was an obliging, genial fellow, 
who told us that he very much wished to be mentioned in a book, if I 



406 



EASTERN LIFE. 



should write one. He pressed for a recommendatory certificate from 
me and otiiers of our party. I did not know enough of him to grant 
his request, and was advised against it by those who had reason to 
know him. We were none of us, however, disposed to bear hard on 
the rapacity of any poor fellow who, cast out from his old faith and 
connections, was deprived of his means of bread. 

The congregation in the little church used by the Mission till their 
own is completed, was very small, even on Good*Friday. Deducting 
the Mission families and our own large company, there were few left 
over. We went to church that day with feelings of no ordinary in- 
terest. A Christian service at Jerusalem on Good Friday ! It was an 
occasion which might rouse the most indifferent. So I should have 
thought: but never was I present at a service so utterly dead. This 
was not a matter of opinion: the deadness was a plain matter of fact. 
I am aware that it must be so with Missions in foreign lands, under the 
discouragements of the position, and in the absence of the intellectual 
stir and spiritual sympathy which naturally and continually occur at 
home : but yet I did wonder whether the converts could find in a ser- 
vice like this as much spiritual interest and benefit as their brethren 
without experience every Sabbath in the time-hallov^^ed services of the 
synagogue. Of the qualifications of the Bishop in every way, and the 
sincerity of his clergy, I never heard or conceived a doubt. The im- 
pediments to adequate success are in the very nature of the enterprise, 
and the position of the parties, and are, as I think will be proved, in- 
superable by them. 

Our first view over the whole city was from the top of the Mission 
Church. The extent and handsome appearance of Jerusalem surprised 
us. The population is said not to exceed fifteen thousand : but the 
city covers a great extent of ground, from the courts which are en- 
closed by eastern houses, and the large unoccupied spaces which lie 
within the walls. The massive stone walls and substantial character 
of the buildings remove every appearance of sordidness, when the 
place is seen from a height : and the clearness of the atmosphere, and 
the hue of the building-material, give a clean and cheerful air to the 
whole, which accords litde with the traveler's preconception of the 
fallen state of Jerusalem. The environs look fertile and flourishing, 
except where the Moab mountains rise lofty and bare, but adorned 
with the heavenly hues belonging to the glorious climate. The mina- 
rets glittered against the clear sky ; and the arches, marble platform, 
and splendid variegated buildings of the Mosque of Omar, crowning 
the heights of Moriah, were very beautiful. We were glad to hear 
from the Consul's lady that the climate is found very healthy, there 
being always a fresh breeze, in the hottest summer weather. 

On Good Friday, we took a very interesting walk. In the course 
of it, we saw the interior of a Jewish house, where the gentlemen went 
on business. The handsome lady of the house invited me to the raised 
part of the apartment, while the gentlemen sat below, awaiting the 
host, who was so picturesque a figure, with his two caps — one on the 
top of the other — his marked Jewish features, and graceful attitudes, 



MOSQUE OF OMAR. 



407 



his spectacles and vast beard, that I longed to carry away a sketch of 
him. The women of the household had very fair complexions and 
blue eyes. As for the apartment, the floor was rickety ; and so were 
the two bedsteads. The table-cloth, strewed with the crumbs of the 
late meal, was absolutely filthy ; while there was a great quantity of 
plate, massive and old-fashioned, on a sideboard ; the cushions of the 
deewan were of rich brocade ; and some prints of eminent living Jews 
hung round the walls. The dress of the Jewish women is deforming 
to the figure, but very becoming to the head. The turbans of the men, 
chiefly blue or white, are substantial and lofty, like the priests' helmets 
which we see in old pictures. It was always a treat to walk through 
the Jew quarter, and especially on the Sabbath, when numbers were 
abroad in their best costume, sitting at their doors, or passing to or 
from the synagogue through the quiet streets. They are a very hand- 
some race, with eyes which seem to distinguish them from the rest of 
mankind — large, soft, and of the deepest expression. 

We went forth to-day by the Via Dolorosa, which Avas so quiet that 
the horse's feet of a passing rider sounded as they might in the Sik at 
Petra. We turned into an arcade to the right, in order to get as near 
as infidels may to the Mosque of Omar. No Jew or Christian can 
pass the threshold of the outermost courts without certain and imme- 
diate death by stoning or beating. It requires some little resolution, 
for those who dislike being hated, to approach this threshold, so 
abominable are the insults offered to strangers. A boy began imme- 
diately to spit at us. We presently obtained a better view of this 
usurping temple from the city wall which we climbed for the purpose. 
From hence, the inclosure was spread out beneath us, as in a map, and 
we could perceive the proportion it bore to the rest of the city, and 
observe how much lower Mount Moriah was than Zion. The Mosque 
was very beautiful, with its vast dome, and its walls of variegated mar- 
bles, and its noble marble platform, with its flights of steps and light 
arcades ; and the green lawn which sloped away all round, and the 
cypress trees, under which a row of worshipers were at their prayers. 
It was the Mohammedan Sabbath ; and troops of children were at 
play on the grass ; and parties of women in white — Mohammedan 
nuns — were sitting near them ; and the whole scene was proud and 
joyous. But, with all this before my eyes, my mind was with the 
past. It seemed as if the past were more truly before me than what I 
saw. Here was the ground chosen by David, and leveled by Solomon 
to receive the Temple of Jehovah. Here it was that the great king 
lavished his wealth ; and hither came the Sun-worshipers from the 
East to lay hands on the treasure, and level the walls, and carry the 
people away captive. Here was it restored under Ezra, and fortified 
round when the people worked at the walls with arms in their girdles 
and by their sides : and here, when all had been again laid waste, did 
Herod raise the structure which was so glorious that the Jews were as 
proud as the Mohammedans now before my eyes, and mocked at the 
saying that it should ever be overthrown. I seemed to see it now as 
it was then, with its glittering roof, whose plates of gold were too daz- 



408 



EASTERN LIFE. 



zling to look upon in the morning sun ; and its golden vine, cover- 
ing the front of the Holy place ; and its colonnades which separated 
the temple itself from its outer courts. I looked for the place where 
the Sheep-gate was, and the Water-gate, through which the priest 
went down to the spring of Siloam, and declared, as he returned 
with the golden ewer, that thus they drew water from the wells of sal- 
vation. I looked for the court beyond which the money-changers 
should not have been permitted to intrude ; and the Court of the Gen- 
tiles, and the Court of the Women ; and where the Treasury-chest 
stood, so placed on the right of the entrance that when the worshiper 
threw in his gift, the left hand would not know what the right hand 
did. I saw where the Scribes must have sat to teach, and where 
Christ so taught in their jealous presence as to make converts of those 
who were sent to apprehend him. I saw where the altar stood, whence 
the smoke went up from the morning and evening sacrifice : and the 
Holy Place, with the ark in the midst ; and the long purple curtain — 
the veil destined to be rent — which separated it from the Holy of Ho- 
lies, where no one entered but the High Priest alone. These places 
had been familiar to my mind's eye from my youth up : and now I 
looked at the ground they had occupied, amidst scenery but little 
changed, with an emotion which none but those who have made the 
Bible the study of the best years of their life could conceive of. But 
this was not all. Here it was that Titus saw, from his camp over to 
our right, the flames shooting up to destroy the building which he had 
resolved to save. Here it was consumed : and here the plough was 
brought to destroy the very foundations, so that one stone should not 
be left upon another. Here it was that " Moriah became a ploughed 
field," and the wild grapes grew where the golden vine had hung its 
clusters. It was long after this before any Jew could see his Zionand 
Moriah even as we saw them now. All were banished ; and when 
they returned and hung about the land, hoping to find some way in, so 
that they might die within sight of their holy hills, they were inces- 
santly driven back. In the age of Constantine, however, they were 
allowed to approach so as to see the city from the surrounding heights ; 
— a mournful liberty, like that of permitting an exile to look at his na- 
tive shores from the sea, but never to land. At length, the Jews were 
allowed to purchase of the Roman soldiers leave to enter Jerusalem 
once a-year ; and, of all days, on the anniversary of the fall of the city 
before Titus ; — and merely to do — what we presently saw their de- 
scendants doing. 

I have said how proud and prosperous looked the Mosque of Omar, 
with its marble buildings, its green lawns, the merry children, and gay 
inmates making holiday ; all these ready and eager to stone to death 
on the instant any Jew or Christian who should dare to bring his 
homage to the sacred spot. This is what we saw within the walls. — 
We next went round the outside, till we came, by a narrow crooked 
passage, to a desolate spot, occupied by desolate people. Under a 
high, massive, very ancient wall was a dusty narrow enclosed space, 
where we saw the most mournful groups I ever encountered. This 
high ancient wall, where weeds are springing from the crevices of the 



jews' place of wailing. 



409 



stones, is believed to be a part, and the only part remaining, of Solo- 
mon's temple wall : and here the Jews come every Friday, to their 
Place of Wailing, as it is called, to mourn over the fall of their Beauti- 
ful House, and pray for its restoration. What a contrast did these 
humbled people present to the proud Mohammedans within ! The 
women were sitting in the dust, — some wailing aloud, some repeating 
prayers with moving lips, and others reading them from books on their 
knees. A few children were at play on the ground, and some aged 
men sat silent, their heads drooped on their breasts. Several younger 
men were leaning against the wall, pressing their foreheads against the 
stones, and resting their books on their clasped hands in the crevices. 
With some, this wailing is no form : for I saw tears on their cheeks. 
I longed to know if any had hope in their hearts that they, or their 
children within a few generations, should pass that wall, and become 
the echoes of that ancient cry, "Lift up your heads, ye gates, that 
the King of Glory may come in !" If they have any such hope, it 
may give some sweetness to this rite of humiliation. We had no such 
hope for them; and it was with unspeakable sadness that I, for one, 
turned away from the thought of the pride and tyranny within that 
enclosure, and the desolation without, carrying with me a deep-felt 
lesson on the strength of human faith, and the weakness of the tie of 
human brotherhood. 

Whether the strength be equal under all faiths or not, it appears that 
the weakness is. See here what is done in the name of religion! This 
Jerusalem is the most sacred place in the world, except Mekkeh, to the 
Mohammedan: and to the Christian and the Jew, it is the most sacred 
place in the world. What are they doing in this sanctuary of their 
common Father, as they all declare it to be? Here are the Moham- 
medans eager to kill any Jew or Christian who may enter the Mosque 
of Omar. There are the Greek and Latin Christians hating each 
other, and ready to kill any Jew or Mohammedan who may enter the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And here are the Jews, pleading 
against their enemies, in the vengeful language of their ancient prophets. 
On them, we are not disposed to bear hardly: and we do not wonder 
if, in the imagination of the pride which is glorying in its usurpation 
behind that wall, and when the breeze brings the light laughter of the 
children who are sporting within, the mourners cry from their Place 
of Wailing, " Happy shall he be who rewardeth thee as thou hast 
served us ! Happy shall he be who taketh thy little ones, and dasheth 
them against the stones !" But still, looking upon religion as she now 
appears in this, her throne and sanctuary, we find but a hideous idol 
which has usurped the oracles, instructing men to be proud before God, 
and to hate one another. 

We were shown, near this spot, the remains of the bridge which 
once joined the two hills, Zion and Moriah. The piers of a bridge are 
distinct enough. The heaps of rubbish and ruined wall here made this 
place as desolate as anything we saw in Egypt. 

One object with us to-day was to sit down, and read as much of the 
gospel history as relates to the temple and its vicinity, within view of 



410 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the places themselves : but Abdallah would not permit us to do so. 
He had prepared his list of what we were to see, and took the ma- 
nagement of us completely. He led us to the Golden Gate: a portal of 
the ^Nlosque of Omar, well walled up, and constantly guarded ; the Mo- 
hammedans having a tradition that if ever they are driven out from 
possession, it will be by the Jews or Christians entering at this gate. — 
The temple wall can hardly have been entirely leveled at this part, — 
any more than at the Jews' Place of Wailing; for the very large 
stones, — blocks of twenty-four feet long, — built into the wall near the 
base, are, by universal agreement, ancient; though all the upper part 
of the wall is manifesdy modern. At this place I found a difficulty 
which occurred to me whenever I passed under this eastern wall, or 
through the valley of Jehoshaphat, above which we now stood. — At 
the bottom of this valley runs the brook Kedron, — or rather, its chan- 
nel ; for I believe water is never seen in it. The valley is about half 
a mile long, from the village of Siloam to the Garden of Gethsemane. 
Its rocky sides are full of tombs; and here il is that the Jews expect 
the Last Judgment to take place, founding their belief on the text (Joel 
in. 12) — '"Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the Valley 
of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit, to judge all the heathen round 
about." The Mohammedans of Jerusalem have picked up something 
of this from the Jews : for they show a stone in this, their temple wall, 
where their prophet is to sit on the last day, while Christ executes 
judgment in the valley below. Xow, in the time of Herod's temple, 
there was a sheer descent, from the top of the temple buildings to the 
brook, of 480 ft. AVhat the depth of the ^'alley is now, I can nowhere 
learn ;*^ but certainly it is nothing like this. And there is such a pro- 
jection under the wall as to form a terrace and long slope, where the 
Mohammedans have made a cemetery. ^Inch of this projection may 
consist of rubbish from the overthrown city ; as is the case with the 
soil on Mount Zion : but it is difficult to see how this side of the valley 
should ever have been so precipitous as the old accounts make it. At 
first, I thought that the temple wall might have stood further out than 
the present wall: but there are the ancient hewn stones to contradict 
that supposition. The temple buildings on the eastern side being on 
the wail would give a considerable additional height : and their posi- 
tion, crowning the steep side of the valley, must have been as fine as 
can be conceived: but how the total height can ever have been 480 ft. 
it is not easy to see : nor how that side can ever have been wholly 
precipitous. 

Abdallah showed us what is called, against all probability, the Pool 
of Bethesda. There are three arches at one end, which the stranger 
is told are the five porches. These arches are walled up : and they, 
and the whole circuit of walls, are tufted with weeds. All the pools 
in Palestine are beautiful : and this not less than others. It was mea- 

* Dr. Robinson gives the depth of the precipice merely, below the S. E. corner of 
the wall, at 150 ft. 1 should have supposed it more: but there is a long slope from 
the top of the precipice to the base of the wall,- — Biblical Researches. 1. 343. 



THE TOMB OF DAVID. 



411 



siired by Maundrell, and is 120 paces long, forty broad, and not less 
than eight deep. There is never any water in it now : and there is 
every reason to suppose it a part of the fosse which once separated 
Mount Moriah from Bezetha. I could not but wish that this might have 
been Bethesda ; but it cannot be reasonably supposed so. 

As we returned homewards, with our minds full of what we had 
seen, we encountered in the street two men fighting about a skin of 
water. Three others soon joined ; and a more desperate combat I 
never saw. They fought as they might for freedom or life ; and all 
about a skinful of water, which was spilt in the struggle. Here was 
the Arab " intensity," shown in this childish way ! 

In the evening the rest of the party went to the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre, to see the washing of the Pilgrims' feet. In Rome, I might 
have gone to such a spectacle : but here I could not. After having 
visited such scenes in the morning, and having now Olivet and the 
rising moon in view from our platform, I could not go to witness mum- 
meries done in the name of Christianity, compared with which the 
lowest Fetichism on the banks of an African river would have been 
inoffensive. — Nor would I go the next day to see the miracle of the 
Greek fire in the same place. — This miracle has now dwindled down 
into a show so little marvelous that one wonders how long the faith in 
it will last. Formerly, as every one knows, miraculous flames used to 
shoot out, red and green, from apertures on each side of, and behind 
the altar; and the Pilgrims rushed to light their torches, throwing each 
other down, and trampling to death more or fewer who could not stand 
the rush.. Moreover, there was a feud between the Greek and Latin 
Christians about which should remove the covering of the altar after the 
ceremony; and lives were lost in this way. When Ibraheem Pasha 
ruled here, he endeavored to keep order by going in himself, on one 
occasion, among the crowd ; but he unfortunately fainted ; and his sol- 
diers brought him out with great violence. So many lives were lost 
on that occasion that a considerable modification of the proceedings 
ensued. The cloth is removed by the Mohammedan governor (a curious 
transaction of Christian worship !) and now the fire is diffused by 
torches being handed out of these apertures, and carried round for the 
Pilgrims to light theirs by, — the fire being still, for the present, called 
miraculous. 

According to the account the gentlemen brought home, the crowd 
was very dense : the people were kept tolerably quiet by two rows of 
Turkish soldiers, till the fire appeared ; but after the kindling of the 
pilgrims' torches, the hubbub was terrible to witness. The poor crea- 
tures were perfectly frantic, not only shouting and gesticulating, but 
leaping on one another's shoulders. One of my friends, who never 
uses strong language, told me " it was like a holiday in hell." Such is 
Christianity at Jerusalem ! 

We went that day to see David's tomb, or the place of it. A mosque 
is built over it, — outside the walls, — on Mount Zion. We were not 
worthy to see the tomb itself, — neither Jew nor Christian being per- 
mitted to approach it: — a most galling restriction to the resident Jews! 



412 



EASTERN LIFE. 



But we saw a procession of Derweeshes going to it. The Santons 
belonging to this mosque are very great men, indeed, the most powerful 
in Jerusalem ; — such great men that they do nothing whatever, and are 
fed by corn and other good things given them by the people, on the 
compulsion of their holiness. Their horses, which awaited them near, 
were sleek, handsome creatures ; and their masters looked much like 
other well-dressed Mohammedans. They walked in a kind of pro- 
cession, with rude music, and entered the mosque. — We were told that 
there was one place in the same building which we might see : — the 
Csenaculum : the room where Jesus supped with his disciples. It is 
a very large upper room, dim and cheerless, with a niche at one end, 
where the Christians occasionally perform mass. — The place is sup- 
posed to be an ancient Christian church : but it cannot be what the 
legend declares it, as all the buildings on the heights of Zion were razed 
at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. We could not give any- 
more belief to the House of Caiaphas which stands near, — a substan- 
tial, blank stone building. 

The Armenian Convent, close at hand, has a most gorgeous chapel, 
but little that is interesting, and much that is painful to see. In Italy, 
I found the Christian mythology and superstitious observances very 
distressing to witness : but I could have had no idea how much more 
painful the spectacle is in Palestine. It is not merely that the sim- 
plicity of the actual teachings of Christ comes out most strikingly on 
the spot where he lived and taught ; and that the singleness of his doc- 
trine, and the pure monotheism of his own ideas are evident as the 
daylight to those who have traveled with the Hebrews from Egypt 
hither, and read their history by local lights, but that in Egypt we had 
seen the origin of the mythology and superstitions which were engrafted 
upon Christianity at Alexandria, and in Greece and Rome, and which 
debase the religion of Christ at this day. We had seen in Egypt and 
in the Greek philosophy which was thence derived, ages before the 
time of Christ, those allegorical fables of Osiris and his nature and 
ofiices, of the descent of the Supreme on earth in a fleshy form, and 
the deifying or sanctification of intercessors which were unhappily, 
but very naturally, connected with the simple teachings of Christ by 
the Platonizing converts of various countries, at an early period, and 
which to this day deform and vitiate the gospel in countries which yet 
keep clear of the open idolatries of the Greek and Latin Churches. 
The vitiation of the teachings of Christ anywhere, and under the least 
offensive outward observance, is mournful enough : but here, while 
Christ, and nature, and history all bid us reverently preserve the purity 
and simplicity of his teachings, it is truly revolting to meet every- 
where, in its extremestrankness, the superstition which the interfusion 
of the old Egyptian element has caused. Here we have, in these 
Christian churches, the wrathful "jealous God" of the old Hebrews, 
together with the propitiating Osiris, the malignant Typho, the Hades, 
the Purgatory, and the incarnations of the Egyptians and their disciple 
Pythagoras ; the Logos of the Platonists, the incompatible resurrection 
and immortality of opposing schools, all mingled together and pro- 



THE CAVE OF JEREMIAH. 



413 



fanely named after him who came to teach, not " cunningly devised 
fables," but that men should love their Father in Heaven with all their 
hearts and minds, and their neighbor as themselves. The Egyptian 
theology and Greek philosophy were proper to their times, and vene- 
rable on that account, as the strongest light that men had reached : but, 
reproduced with adulterations in Jerusalem, and used to take Christ's 
name in vain, they were as afflicting as the original records of the 
ideas in Egypt were interesting. The marks of the kissing of the tomb 
of St. James in this Armenian convent showed what the quality of the 
devotion here was. — The different churches in Jerusalem divide among 
them the objects which attract strangers. In this convent are shown 
the stone which closed the Holy Sepulchre ; the " prison of Christ;" 
the spot where Peter denied his Lord, and the court where the cock 
crew : this being on the opposite side of the city from Fort Antonia 
and the residence of Pilate ! The Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem 
are buried here: and near, are the cemeteries of all the Christian con- 
vents, where it is interesting to read the names of Englishmen who, 
without the wish entertained by pious Jews, have been destined to find 
their long rest here. 

Near this place, just within the Zion Gate, are the huts of the 
Lepers. We passed them many times, and never without seeing the 
poor outcasts, sitting by the wayside to ask charity. All their lives 
long, they have no society beyond their own miserable company: and 
these intermarry, so that there are children born into their cursed life, 
born to give their parents something to hope for a few years, and 
then to show the disease, and die by inches under it. 

Returning by the Jew Quarter, we looked into the synagogue, — I 
finding my way to the women's gallery, to the great surprise of some 
Jewesses who were gossiping on the ground, not far off. Only one 
woman was in the gallery ; and nothing interesting was going forward. 

When the gentlemen returned from church, the next day, (Sunday, 
April 4th,) we enjoyed a delightful ramble. We left the city by the 
Damascus gate, and came to one of those beautiful pools which I was 
always glad to fall in with. It was called the Sheep-pool ; and it lies 
dim under arches in the rock, whence hang long strings of weeds, 
ready to wave with the first breath of wind. An Arab was filling his 
waterskins there, his red tarboosh casting a light in among the shadowy 
waters and green ferns. I ran down to this pool, whenever we passed 
that way ; and I always found some such picture there. 

Our present object was the Cave of Jeremiah, which we approached 
over the open field. We were now on the ground of Titus's camp. 
Here lay " the abomination of desolation" at that terrible time. Here 
rang the armor and sounded the heavy tread of the cohorts ; and here 
the ground shook when the wooden towers of the Romans were pushed 
up against the walls, that Jew and Roman might fight face to face from 
the walls and from these towers. This was the only side on which 
the city could be attacked, the other three being surrounded by ravines. 
On this north side, therefore, the whole army was encamped, except 
one legion which occupied the lower slope of the Mount of Olives. I 



414 



EASTERN LIFE. 



believe it is concluded that the northern wall corresponds to the outer- 
most of the three walls on that side which enclosed the city in those 
days ; and indeed there is but a narrow sinking of the ground, little 
more than a trench, between the wall and the high ground. On these 
slopes, and some way back into the country, lay the lines of Roman 
tents, where now the whole ground was sheeted with young barley, 
and clumped and sprinkled over with olive trees. In a deep rural still- 
ness, and passing among springing crops and fruitful orchards, we 
crossed this great military site, till we came to the silent rock-retreat 
which is named after Jeremiah. 

The door was fast; and we knocked in vain. But on another occa- 
sion we obtained admission, and saw what we should liave been sorry 
to have missed. This wonderful retreat is entered by a door cut in 
the south face of a rocky hill ; which face seems to be artificially 
opened. The grotto itself appears to occupy the whole interior of the 
hill. A painter would find subjects for years within that door, — 
among the black, brown and gray rocks, the shadowy caverns, and 
brilliant projections, where light falls in all imaginable caprices. The 
whole would be too sombre, — almost as gloomy as the meditations of 
Jeremiah, — but for the weeds, which here again cast in their vivid green 
to relieve the sense, and amuse the eye by the tossing of their tufts 
and ladders and garlands. This grotto is not a single cave, but a spa- 
cious set of caverns, separated by natural partitions, and rude pillars 
and intercolumnar screens. There is a whole nest of vaulted chapels 
or dwellings, crypts, and chambers, at hand, — accessible, I believe, 
only by the one portal in the hill side. The Latin monks occasionally 
perform mass in the cavern : and this was all we could learn about 
the place. 

We were determined not to be disappointed of our reading to-day ; 
and so we gave Abdallah to understand. He placed himself within 
hearing, and watched us with an appearance of strong curiosity. From 
the Cave, we had come round under the walls to the eastern side, where 
we found in the Turkish cemetery, some scanty shade, where we could 
sit, and look and listen. Here we read the whole of the Gospel of 
Matthew which relates to scenes and events in Jerusalem or the neigh- 
borhood. Behind us was the enclosure where the temple stood. At 
our feet, the ground sloped steeply down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat. 
In the depth of the valley was the channel of the brook Kedron, and 
on its opposite bank, far below to the left, was the Garden of Gethse- 
mane, with its hoary olives. Before us uprose the long slope of Olivet, 
over which, to the right, slanted the road to Bethany. When, in my 
youth, I used to pore over the four Gospels, trying to make a Harmony 
and a map on paper, and pictures in my mind, how little did I dream 
that I should sit and read the record here, under the temple wall, and 
find many things made so wonderfully clear! And O! how simple, 
how familiar, how cheerful, (yet all the more pathetic for that,) are his 
teachings, when read in the presence of their illustrations, in comparison 
with the solemn delivery of them, cut up into verses, in our churches, 
and even in our family circles at home ! The biblical scholar may 



MOUNT OF OLIVES. 



415 



owe much to that device of Robert Stevens, — much convenience for 
reference, — but, as for the rest of the world, it seems as if it would have 
been better for us that Robert Stevens should have slept all the way 
from Lyons to Paris, than that he should have spent his time in cutting 
up the Bible, in a vast hurry, into verses. Happily, there are para- 
graph Bibles still to be had ; though too few seem to prefer the use of 
them. 

Nothing struck us more than the space and vastness everywhere 
about us. The commonest disappointment of all in seeing places which 
one has dreamed of all one's life, or remembered from childhood, is to 
find everything so small. My idea of Jerusalem was of a city nearly 
surrounded with dells, with a mere rising ground for the Mount of 
Olives. But as we sat among the tombs to-day, the wayfarers on the 
Bethany road, and the horsemen in the valley below, and the goat- 
herds on the slope of Olivet, were diminished to the size of people on 
the sea shore, seen from a lofty cliff. From a mere glance round, one 
would have said that we had the whole scene nearly to ourselves; but, 
when we came to consider, there were many people within sight, and 
they appeared so few only on account of the scale of the surrounding 
objects. The village of Siloam was on the opposite hill, about half a 
mile away to the right ; and I watched the progress of two horsemen 
from before it to the point of road near us, ascending to the city. I 
was surprised to see how slow appeared their progress, and how small 
their size below ; and how long they were in winding up the hill on 
which we sat. The gaping tombs in the opposite rock looked mere 
holes. — The winding away of the valley southwards was exceedingly 
beautiful, with its red rocks and dim olive groves, and sloping fields 
and craggy, terraced hills, till the distant heights overlapped, and 
screened from us the blue Moab mountains. 

In returning, we skirted the city southwards, and entered by the 
Zion gate. The trees of the Armenian convent garden tempted us in : 
but we found nothing worth looking at, and brought away only a few 
roses and poor geraniums. We had not yet set foot on the Mount of 
Olives, or crossed the Kedron. These and some other sacred places 
we were to explore a few days hence, on our return from an expedition 
to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BETHANY.— PLAIN OF JERICHO.— ELISHA'S SPRING.— JERICHO.— THE 
JORDAN.— THE DEAD SEA.— CONVENT OF SANTA SABA. 

On Monday, April 5th, we were on horseback early for our rendez- 
vous in the valley of Jehoshaphat. The party were to meet at Job's 
Tomb ; and a large company we appeared when assembled. Our De- 
sert comrades were all there ; and four strangers, — European gentle- 
men who had asked permission to ride with us, on account of the in- 



416 



EASTERN LIFE. 



security of the roads. Our servants, tents and kitchens were there, as 
we had to spend two nights away from Jerusalem ; and ten well-armed 
guards escorted us. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is as danger- 
ous from thieves as ever it was. There is not a worse road in Pales- 
tine : but our caravan was too large to be attacked by any band of rob- 
bers ; and vv^e hardly saw a human figure, except at the wells, the whole 
way, after leaving Bethany. 

It was about nine o'clock when we began to wind up the camel road 
to Bethany, which led us over the eastern ridge of Olivet. As soon as 
we had passed the ridge, Bethany came in view, lying on the eastern 
slope of the Mount of Olives, and, as everybody knows, "fifteen fur- 
longs" distant from Jerusalem. It is now a village inhabited by about 
twenty famihes ; a very poor place; but looking less squalid than 
might be expected, from its houses being built, as everywhere in that 
country, of stone ; — square, substantial, and large dwellings, compared 
with village abodes elsewhere. Its position on the side of the hill is 
very fine, seen from below. The moment of interest, however, is in 
crossing the ridge above, when one is about to lose sight of Jerusalem, 
towering on its Zion behind, and to drop down into the village, which 
lies so quietly among its olive groves and fields. This is the spot for 
remembering who it was that was so glad to come hither and rest: to 
place that ridge between himself and the doomed city, which was revel- 
ing in her Pharisaic pride, ready to stone him who was sent unto her ; to 
leave behind all that pride and peril, and come here to repose among 
friends, and open his human affections to Lazarus and his sisters. 

We were desired to dismount, just above Bethany, to visit what the 
monks called the Tomb of Lazarus. Without supposing it to be that, 
we found it interesting, as a really ancient tomb. It was so small, that few 
of us went down; but I wished to see the whole of it. A few steep and 
difficult steps brought me down into a small vaulted chamber ; and two 
or three more very deep and narrow steps led to the lower chamber 
where the body was laid. We questioned whether there was room 
for more than one body. In exploring tombs in this country, whether 
such as this, or the more picturesque and natural burial-places in the 
branching caverns of the limestone rocks, I often wished that the old 
painters had enjoyed our opportunities, — for the sake of art as well as 
truth ; and then we should have had representations of Lazarus coming 
forth from chambers in the rock, instead of rising from such a grave as 
we see dug in European churchyards. The limestone rocks, full of 
caverns, now used as dwellings for men and cattle, were of old those 
" chambers of the grave" which puzzled our childhood by that name : 
and it is a great privilege to have seen them, so as to understand how 
the dead were said to be calhng to each other ; and how the stone was 
rolled away from the mouth of the sepulchres, and how Jesus could 
have cried with a loud voice for the dead to come forth. After having 
visited these places, how vivid is the picture of such scenes ! How 
the voice echoes through those dim " chambers of the tomb," and is 
answered by the dead man appearing in his cerements, — appearing 
from the end of the passage, or in the shadow of the recess ! 



PLAIN OF JERICHO. 



417 



The monks, when taken as guides, show in the village the house of 
Martha and Mary, as they pretend, and that of Simon the Leper : but 
we did not inquire for these, having no wish to mix up anything fabu- 
lous with our observations of a place so interesting as Bethany. 

Our road led us to the bottom of the valley, where there were 
patches of cultivation on the stony soil. We rode for three or four 
miles, sometimes on the one hill and sometimes on the other ; and then 
we began to ascend the hot and rough and dreary road where begin the 
dangers of the way " from Jerusalem to Jericho ;" — where the traveler 
enters among the fastnesses of the thieves who have infested the road 
from time immemorial. There is a hollow way which is considered 
the most dangerous of all. Here Sir Frederick Henniker was stripped 
and left for dead by robbers in 1820. His servants fled and hid them- 
selves on the first alarm. When they returned, he was lying naked 
and bleeding on the sultry road. They put him on a horse, and carried 
him to Jericho, where he found succor. Perhaps he was thinking of 
the parable of the Samaritan when this accident befell him. I was 
thinking of it almost every step of the way. — Another beautiful story 
was presently after full in my mind ; — a Catholic legend which was told 
me by a German friend in America, when I httle dreamed of ever being 
on the spot. Our road now gradually ascended the high ridge from 
which we were soon to overlook the plain of Jericho. The track was 
so stony and difficult as to make our progress very slow : and the white 
rocks under the midday sun gave out such heat and glare as made me 
enter more thoroughly into the story of Peter and the cherries than my 
readers can perhaps do. And yet the many to whom I have told the 
legend in conversation have all felt its beauty. It is this. 

Jesus and two or three of his disciples went down, one summer day, 
from Jerusalem to Jericho. Peter, — the ardent and eager Peter, — was, 
as usual, by the Teacher's side. On the road on Olivet lay a horseshoe, 
which the Teacher desired Peter to pick up, but which Peter let lie, as 
he did not think it worth the trouble of stooping for. The Teacher 
stooped for it, and exchanged it in the village for a measure of cherries. 
These cherries he carried (as eastern men now carry such things) in 
the bosom-folds of his dress.* When they had to ascend the ridge, 
and the road lay between heated rocks, and over rugged stones, and 
among glaring white dust, Peter became tormented with heat and thirst, 
and fell behind. Then the Teacher dropped a ripe cherry at every 
few steps ; and Peter eagerly stooped for them. When they were all 
done, Jesus turned to him, and said with a smile, " He who is above 
stooping to a small thing, will have to bend his back to many lesser 
things." 

From the ridge, we had a splendid view of the plain of the Jordan. 
It lay, apparently as flat as a table, to the base of the Moab mountains 
opposite, and to the Dead Sea, to our right, — the south. The surround- 
ing mountains were dressed in the soft hues which such an atmosphere 

* " Good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall 
men give into your bosom." — Luke VI. 38. 



27 



418 



EASTERN LIFE. 



alone can exhibit. The plain was once as delicious a region as ever 
men lived in. Josephus calls it a " divine region;" and tells of its miles 
of gardens and palm groves. Here grew the balsam which was worth 
its own weight in silver, and was a treasure for which the kings of the 
East made war. Cleopatra sent a commission, to bring some balsam 
plants to Egypt. The whole valley or plain was studded with towns ; 
and every town was embosomed in verdure, as Damascus is now. 
Jericho was but one of a hundred neighboring cities: but it was dis- 
tinguished above others by the name of the City of Palm trees : and 
now, travelers dispute about where Jericho stood ! From our height, 
we saw a low square tower rising above some wood, a few miles off : 
and this tower is by many said to be the only remaining fragment of 
the old city : while others suppose its site to be at the base of the hills 
we were now on, and refer to Jericho the remains of an aqueduct, and 
the walls and arches which are scattered about these bare and rocky 
eminences. The scene is indeed very desolate now. The plain is barren, 
except for the strip of verdure, — broad, sinuous, and thickly wooded, — ■ 
which runs through the midst, marking the channel of the river. The 
.palms are gone, and the S3^camores, and the honey which the wild bees 
made in the hollows of their stems-. The fruits and the sugar canes are 
gone ; and instead of these, we now find little but tall reeds, thorny-aca- 
cias, and trees barren of blossom or fruit. The verdant strip is, however, 
beautiful from afar, beautiful for itself, and because it indicates where the 
Jordan flows. It indicates too that the plain might still be fertile. When- 
ever men shall be living there who are wise enough, and free enough, to 
be friends with Nature, the plain may again be as rich as it once was. 

The peculiarities of the plain of the Jordan are not such as can 
disappear within any moderate lapse of time, or be permanently af- 
fected by changes in the conduct of men. The natural features of the 
country have here, as in Egypt and elsewhere, much affected and de- 
termined the character and life of their inhabitants. The hills, which 
enclose the plain, both to the east and west, have a much steeper and 
longer descent to the Jordan valley than on their outer sides. In other 
words, the valley is extraordinarily depressed. According to Russegger, 
the level of the Dead Sea is between 1300 and 1400 feet lower than 
the Mediterranean: and the supposed site of Jericho itself, 774 feet. 
The consequence of this depression of a well-watered district is that the 
plain has a tropical climate and aspect; and that its inhabitants had a 
tropical constitution and habits. They became, in course of time, by 
living among their cane-brakes and palm-groves, as unlike their bre- 
thren of the eastern tribes who led their flocks over the high table-lands, 
as if they had been of a different race. The history of the sinewy, 
well-braced, roving eastern tribes is, therefore, conspicuously different, 
throughout the Old Testament, from that of the soft and indolent dwell- 
ers in the valley. It is significantly remarked, in the History of the 
Hebrew Monarchy,* that "the actual rulers of the country appear at 
every time to have dwelt on the higher grounds." 



* A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, p. 5. 



PLAIN OF THE JORDAN MOUNT OF TEMPTATION. 



419 



The descent was truly like a plunge into the tropics ; and for two 
days from that nioment, we suffered more from the heat than, I think, 
during any part of our travels. The murkiness of the air was also 
remarkable: not only a steaming heat, but a heavy thickness which 
deadened the sun and the waters, and our spirits and breathing. 
This increased much as we approached the Dead Sea, the next day : 
but it was very perceptible from the moment we descended into the 
plain. 

As I checked my horse on the summit, and looked over the plain, I 
could not help sending a searching gaze after the Jordan, though I well 
knev\r that it lay below three terraces, — •" down in a hole," as a recent 
visitor had told us. I couid trace its course by the sinuous line of 
wood : but for the rest, I must wait another day. — There was another 
stream to be visited first. It may be remembered that, once upon a 
time, "the men of Jericho said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the 
situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth ; but the water is 
naught, and the ground barren:"* and it may be remembered how the 
story goes on, — how Elisha healed the waters, that there should not be 
from thence any more death or barren land: and that " the waters were 
healed unto this day." Another strip of woodland marked the course 
of this spring of Elisha's, about a mile, I think, from the base of the 
hills we were on. Here we were to encamp. 

The descent was like an irregular stair-case : it was so steep that al- 
most every one dismounted: but the heat was so excessive that I was 
disposed to keep my seat if possible. When I glanced up from the 
bottom, and saw the last of the party arrive on the ridge, and prepare 
to begin the descent, it looked so fearful that I was glad to turn away. 

One of the most baseless traditions of the Holy Land adheres to this 
spot. The mountain immediately to our left in descending is supposed 
to be the Mount of Temptation. It was probably first fixed upon from 
its commanding the richest part of the country, — the best local example 
of " the kingdoms of the earth, and the glory of them." This mountain 
is called Cluarantania. In its rocky face are square holes — the entrances 
of caves : and hither come, every year, devotees, — some from a great 
distance,— to dwell for forty days in this waste place, barely supporting 
themselves by such roots and herbs as they can find. Some of these 
caves are generally inhabited by tiie robbers who give such a bad name 
to the district. 

We had not traveled far over the sands and among the bushes of the 
plain, when we saw our tents pitched in the most delicious spot, be- 
yond all comparison, that had yet occurred for our encampment. Till 
now, we had nowhere seen forest-scenery. Here it was, — on the banks 
of Ehsha's stream, — now called Ain Sultan. The clear, rushing waters 
flowed away under the spreading branches of gnarled old trees ; and 
there were thickets beyond, where the mules and horses could scarcely 
force their way. The green and golden sheeted lights, and broad sha- 
dows on the stream were to our eyes hke water to the desert-traveler. 
" As You Like It" was in my head all day ; for here was an exact re- 



* 2 Kings 11. 19. 



420 



EASTERN LIFE. 



alization of my conception of the forest-haunts of Rosalind and Jaques. 
I need not say that it was equally unlike anything I had looked for in 
the Holy Land. Our tent was close upon the stream : but the heat was 
so excessive that we could not bear the tent, and had our dinner-table 
placed under a tree, whose roots were washed by the brook. Other 
parties of our comrades were dining, or lying on the banks of the stream : 
and the Arabs sat in groups near the tents. Every encampment of 
travelers in these Avild places is beautiful : but I never saw one so beau- 
tiful as this. 

After dinner, we went to the ruins, at the foot of Quarantania. In 
several directions, we saw traces of foundation walls ; and on the hill 
side was the fragment of an aqueduct; and belov/, some vaulted re- 
cesses, remains of square edifices, and many strewn stones : but no- 
thing to mark the site of a very ancient or extensive city. — The holes ia 
the strata of the precipices looked so like Petra, that some of us wished 
to climb up to them : but the chief of our escort, the Sheikh of the 
district, stepped in the way, barred the passage, and drew his sword 
across his throat, to convey that robbers were there. He told the dra- 
goman that being responsible for our safety, he could let no one go to 
the caves. 

I had before traced the stream up to its source, — about a quarter of a 
mile from our tent. The spring bubbled up under some bushes, and 
spread, clear and shallow, into a little pond, where some hewn stones 
were scattered about, seeming to show that the source had once been 
built over. When we returned from duarantania, and the toils of the 
day were over. Miss — — and I stole away to the spring to bathe. We 
found each a drooping tree which made a close dressing-room ; and I 
trusted to find some spot where the water was deep enough for our 
purpose. Under a tree I found a pool chin deep; and there, in that 
quiet spot, where there was no sou ad but the rustle and dip of the 
boughs overhead, we bathed, — shaking off the fatigues of a hot and 
toilsome day. It was dusk when we came out, and a lustrous planet 
hung over the nearest hill. 

The Eastern traveler feels a strong inclination to bathe in every 
sacred sea, river and spring. We had done it in xlrabia; and now the 
interest grew as we visited places more and more famihar to our know- 
ledge and imagination. How strong the interest is, and how like that 
of a new baptism, those at home may not be able to imagine ; and such 
may despise the superstition which leads hundreds of pilgrims every 
year to rush into the Jordan. But, among all the travelers who visit 
the Jordan, is there one, however far removed from superstition, who 
is willing to turn away without having bowed his head in its sacred 
waters ? 

There was no moon to-night: but the stars were glorious when I 
came out of our tent to take one more look before retiring to rest. Here 
and there, the watch-fires cast yellow gleams on the trees and waters: 
but there were reaches of the brook, still and cool, where the stars glit- 
tered like fragments of moonlight. This day stands in my journal as 
one of the most delicious of our travels. 

In the morning of the next day (April 6th), about five o'clock, I as- 



JERICHO. 



421 



cended a steep mound near our encampment, and saw a view as differ- 
ent from that of the preceding day as a change of lights could make it. 
The sun had not risen ; but there was a hint of its approach in a gush 
of pale light behind the Moab mountains. The strip of wood-land in 
the middle of the plain looked black in contrast with the brightening 
yellow precipices of Q,uarantania on the west. Southwards, the Dead 
Sea stretched into the land, gray and clear. Below me, our tents and 
horses, and the moving figur-es of the Arabs enlivened the shadowy 
banks of the stream. 

We were off soon after six, and were to reach the Jordan in two 
hours and a half. Our Avay lay through the same sort of forest land 
as we had encamped in. It was very wild ; and almost the only tokens 
of habitation that we met wnth were about Rihhah, — supposed to be 
the site of the ancient Jericho. This is now as miserable a village as 
any in Palestine ; and its inhabitants are as low in character as in wealth. 
No stranger thinks of going near it who is not well armed and guarded. 
What a change from the former days, when this was the garden of the 
known world, — this valley extending through the heart of Palestine ! 
Here, where we now saw only a few fig trees and a mere sprinkling of 
young crops, — here where the luxuriance of the vegetation shows that 
the soil and climate are not to blame for the desolation, — here was once 
the crowded city which submitted to Joshua: here were the fields 
which fed whole armies of Syrians and Egyptians as they passed to 
and fro. And here, in a later day, as people sat abroad in the cool of the 
evening, every man under his own vine or his own fig tree, did news 
circulate from one neighborly group to another which soon filled the 
whole valley. It had been for some time known that a young man, — 
very young to assume to be a prophet, — had been living in the Desert, 
a few miles to the south. He was probably a disciple of the Essenes, 
reared in their large community near the Dead Sea, and not very far 
from hence. The anchorites of that sect and district did not usually 
betake themselves to the hard life of the wilderness till their frames 
were strong to bear hunger, heat and cold. But this new preacher had 
hardly a beard upon his chin ; and his young face made him so little 
like the popular conception of a Hebrew prophet, that his claims were 
much discussed, and many went out to endeavor to meet him ; and 
under the trees here, at eventide, they reported what they had seen 
and heard. What they had heard most about was Repentance; a 
theme so old that men had become careless of it, and now needed a 
new awakening. Every Hebrew child knew, from his infancy up. 
wards, that the Messiah would not come till the nation had repented of 
its prevalent vices, and of every infidelity to Jehovah: and yet, though 
there was much expectation of the Messiah appearing before long, these 
words about repentance passed over the popular ear, without rousing 
the nation's soul; and it needed the appearance of one crying in th^ 
Desert to make ihem apprehend that the axe must be laid to the roOj- 
of every wickedness among them. The doctrine preached was that o^ 
the Essenes; — that a man who had two coats and food enough should 
give to him that had none: that the tax-gatherers should be moderate, 



422 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and exact no perquisites ; and that the soldiers should cherish peace 
among their neighbors and contentment in themselves. The practice 
with which the prophet sanctified the resolutions of the penitent was 
also eriiiiieiirly Essene. It was common among all the Jews to baptize, 
— proceeding upon the words of their Prophets. — '-Wash you, make 
you clean: put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes:'"^ 
— "then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: 
from ail yoi;r nithiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse you;"t — 
in li:eral obedience to such teachings, all the Jewish sects practiced 
bapiism: bu: none wiih such care and observance as the Essenes. The 
precepts and the practice were not new: but, given out now by a devout 
yoj.ng prophet, worthy of the wild olden time, and at a season when 
every Hebrew mother looked upon her infant son as possibly the Mes- 
siah, there was abundant reason why the talk at eventide should be of 
this John. In the course of ten years, the curiosity and interest must 
hare somewhat subsided : but yet must, on the whole, have been the 
chief topic of the time. Many households, and a multitude of indi- 
viduals, had no doubt reformed themselves, and were wailing, in the 
spirit of faitii and tiie practice of purity, for the coming of a greater than 
the prophet, With these the interest would be fully kept alive. And 
the opulent citizens of tne dis'-an: tovrns. passing this way to Jerusa- 
lem at the time of the Feas:$. vrruxd s-.op to learn how they might find 
the new Prophet, and would return, grave because he had told them to 
give of their w-ealih to those who had none. The tax-gatherers, en- 
counterino; him in their rounds, would depart rebuked, and hear the 
whisper anions' the people that the days for paying tribute would soon 
be over, v.-hen the i\I-5i;ah should have driven out the Romans, and 
esiaohsned iiis own kingdam upon Zion. And Herod's soldiers must 
have passed this way, going to and from Fort Machcerus on the Dead 
Sea : and the exhortations to them would become known, and would be 
sratefullv remembered by :::e r ::::..[ inhabitants whom soldiers are wont to 
oppress. And the prophei /i.iijSri:' would be seen at times, even in this 
fertile and peopled district. The cultivator, going out early to watch bis 
field, m dread of the locust-swarm, now that the south-wind was strong, 
finding his fears too just, would see the prophet lighting his fire of green 
wood, to brine down the locusts, and save the neighboring crops. And 
at noon-dav. when the bees are all abroad, and man seeks the shade, 
the wayfarer, resting in the woods, would see the anchorite busy with- 
drawing the honeycomb from the hole of an old sycamore; and the two 
would draw near, and take their noon-tide meal together, and converse 
of him who should come: and then, before night, how far would every 
word be known that the prophet had said ! Again, he must pass by 
this way to some of the stations on the Jordan where he was wont to 
baptize: and, though he had been occasionally seen for ten years, none 
could carelessly let him pass by. 

At last, amo'ns: the many who were allowed carelessly to pass by, 
among the peasants and artisans who inquired at this place where John 



Isaiah I. 16. 



t Ezekiel XXX^T 25. 



PLAIN OF JERICHO. 



423 



was at that time baptizing, came One, in appearance and lowliness like 
the rest, purposing to be baptized like them, and in fact for some time 
afterwards a disciple of the prophet. The dwellers here would not 
know for some months after that they had spoken with one greater than 
the anchorite of the Desert; and when they heard that another had 
risen up, whose disciples were baptizing more converts than John, they 
would endeavor to remember what dignified personage, wdth his train, 
had here inquired the way, and let fall words of promise of his coming 
power and kingdom : and they would differ about which was he ; and 
some would go forth to see him, and recognize him: and when they 
saw him, some, would recall that countenance and voice ; and most 
would go back when they found it was only a carpenter of Nazareth, 
asking how one so lowly, and so little prepared for war and conquest, 
should drive out the Romans, and restore the kingdom to Israel: — how 
it was possible for a teacher of the non-resistant doctrines of the Essenes, 
and for a poor inhabitant of the rural province of Galilee, to set up a 
throne on Zion ; and then ensued those domestic dissensions, — that pa- 
rental prejudice conflicting with youthful enthusiasm, which made the 
parent deliver over the child to destruction, and the child forsake the 
parent, and exhibited the truth that this Messenger of Peace had at 
first brought not peace but a sword. Here, in this rich district, peo- 
pled with indolent and luxurious inhabitants, had this stir begun and 
spread, which w^as never to cease till the plain of Jordan had become 
the waste that we saw it now. By degrees, the landmarks were de- 
stroyed and forgotten; the woods decayed, and no more were planted. 
The rains descended and the floods came, and swept away the dwell- 
ings; and none built them up again. The swallow made a nest for 
herself on the household altars, and the wild beasts came up at the 
swelling of Jordan : the sands swept over the field, and the salt gales 
from the southern lake encrusted the herbage, and poisoned the soil ; 
and robbers of another race came to live in the caves of the hills, and 
made the passage to the Jordan as dreary and perilous as we saw it 
this day, while that Nazarene artisan came to be worshiped as a god 
over a wide continent, and in far islands of the sea. It was a vast 
chapter of human history which unrolled itself before us here beside 
the one remaining tower which is pointed out as marking the site of 
the ancient Jericho. 

And now we were eager for the river, though, as I said before, we 
had been warned that we could not see it till it should appear flowing 
at our very feet. We were aware of our approach, by the three ter- 
races we had to cross, which are distinctly marked. Each was level, 
and then a small slope led down to the next. On a hillock on the first 
terrace, where the vegetation showed that here might once have been 
placed the flourishing home of some inhabitant of the valley, were 
perched a few birds among the brushwood; birds of such a size that 
one of our party thoughtlessly cried out " Ostriches !" There are no 
ostriches here : but these cranes might easily be mistaken for them. 
One by one they rose, flapping their great wings, and stretching out 
their long legs behind them, and sailed away towards the Dead Sea. 



424 



EASTERN LIFE. 



From the formation of the ground, as well as from some of the an- 
cient language about Jordan, it appears as if the river had once been 
subject to inundations, which might have caused the exuberant fertility 
of the plain in former days : but it is not so now. The force with which 
it rushes down the descent from the Lake of Tiberias to the Dead Sea 
has, in course of centuries, so deepened its channel as that it rarely 
rises above its banks. It gushes along in its deep bed among the wood- 
land, and now and then stands in among the stems of the trees ; but it 
is not upon record that it has reached the second terrace in its fullest 
seasons; and its depth varies much in different years, as well as in 
different seasons of every year. Till we came to the brakes on its very 
banks, all was as dry as if no wave had ever touched it. 

Our guides led us towards the spot which is cleared for the baptism 
of the Easter Pilgrims : and the first intimation which I had of our arri- 
val was from some of the party dismounting at the Pilgrims' Beach. 
When I came up, O! how beautiful it was ! — how much more beauti- 
ful than all pictures and all descriptions had led me to expect! The 
only drawback was, that the stream was turbid; — not only whitish, from 
a sulphurous admixture, but muddy. But it swept nobly along, with a 
strong and rapid current, and many eddies, gushing between the oppo- 
site limestone face and the woodland on our bank, now smiting the white 
rock, and now flowing in among the tall reeds, and now winding away 
out of sight behind the poplars and spreading acacias and sycamores 
of the promontories to the south. It is a narrow river; but it is truly 
majestic from its force and lovehness. The vigorous, unspringing cha- 
racter of the wood along its margin struck me much ; and we saw it 
now in its vivid spring green. 

The Pilgrims' Beach is a shelving bit of shore, kept bare for their 
approach ; and here, with something like Arab "intensity," they rush 
in in such numbers, and with so little precaution, that some are drowned 
every year. This year, it was spoken of as a remarkable circum- 
stance that only one was drowned. It must be a fearful sight, — the 
old people carried away by the crowd and the current from their slinky 
footing near the shore, and the women and children from their hold 
upon the overhanging branches : and when once they are swept among 
the eddies, there is no chance for any but strong swimmers. What- 
ever superstition there might be in us, there was none of the wild kind 
which drives the Greek and Latin pilgrims thus headlong into the 
stream. We wished to bathe, but we did it in safety. The ladies 
went north; the gentlemen south. I made a way through the thicket 
with difficulty till I found a little cove which the current scarcely dis- 
turbed, and over which hung a sycamore whose lower branches dipped 
into the water. One might bathe here without touching the mud which 
lay soft and deep beneath. The limestone precipice opposite, gar- 
landed with weeds, and the wooded promontory which shot out below, 
made the river particularly beautiful here ; and sorry I was to leave it 
when the time came for us to mount and proceed. 

It is useless to attempt to make out where the baptism of Jesus took 
place, or where were the stations at which his disciples and John ad- 



THE DEAD SEA. 



425 



ministered the rite. If there were monks on the spot, no doubt every 
locality would be specified with the utmost precision. Happily, the 
river flows on, free from any desecration of the kind. We had it to 
ourselves, and wished for nothing beyond what we saw. We know 
that the Glad Tidings once spread along its whole course, echoed from 
rock to rock, whispered from thicket to thicket, wherever there were 
human hearts on the watch: and the whole region is so sweet and 
sacred that we felt it enough to have touched the river in any point. 

One thing more we did : we remembered friends at home, and in 
lands as far from home as home is from the Jordan. We carried away 
some of the water in tin cases provided for the purpose. This being 
done, we were summoned to horse, and rode away southwards to the 
Dead Sea. 

The belt of woodland soon turned eastwards, and we found our- 
selves exposed to extreme heat, on a desolate plain, crusted with salt, 
and cracked with drought. There had been a closeness and murki- 
ness in the air, all the morning, which were very oppressive ; and now 
it was, at our slow pace, almost intolerable. I put my horse to a fast 
canter, and crossed the plain as quickly as possible, finding this pace 
a relief to my horse, as well as myself. One and another came gal- 
loping up, to obtain the same advantage, and our group reached the 
shore some time before the bulk of the party. The horses hastened to 
the bright clear water, and seemed to be deceived by its apparent fresh- 
ness, for they put down their noses repeatedly, and as often drew back 
in disgust. The drift on the beach looked dreary enough: ridges of 
broken canes and willow twigs washed up, and lying among the salt, 
and the little unwholesome swamps of the shore. The scene was 
really solemn in its dreariness ; the retiring mountains on either hand 
being wholly bare, — of a dull gray with purple shadows, — hot and 
parched to the last degree. The curious lights which hung immova- 
ble over the surface of the waters struck me as showing an unusual 
state of the atmosphere, — the purple haze resting on one part, and the 
line of silvery refraction in another. Though the sky was clear after 
the morning clouds had passed away, the sunshine appeared dim; and 
the heat was most oppressive. — I tasted the limpid water, which looked 
as if it could not be nauseous. I took only about two drops ; but I 
thought I should never again get rid of the taste. It is salt beyond all 
notions one can form of saltness ; and bitter and fetid. And this is 
the water that poor Costigan's coffee was made of! 

Costigan was a young Irishman, whose mind was set upon exploring 
the Dead Sea, and giving the world the benefit of his discoveries. It 
would have been a useful service : and he had zeal and devotedness 
enough for it. But he wanted either knowledge or prudence ; and he 
lost his life in the adventure, without having left us any additional in- 
formation whatever. He sent a small boat overland, on camels' backs, 
to the Lake of Tiberias, and in this he set forth (in an open boat in the 
month of July !) with only one attendant — a Maltese servant. They 
followed the Jordan, entered the Dead Sea, and reached its southern 
end, not without hardship and difficulty. But the fatal struggle was 



426 



EASTERN LIFE. 



in returning. The wind did not often favor them ; and once it blew 
such a squall that they threw overboard whatever came to hand : and 
the first thing; that the servant threw over was their only cask of fresh 
water. They were now compelled to row for their fives, to reach the 
Jordan before they perished with thirst ; but the sun scorched them 
from a cloudless sky, and the air was like that of a furnace. When 
Costigan could row no farther, his servant made some coffee from the 
water of the lake : and then they lay down in the boat to die. But 
the man once more roused himself, and by many efforts brought the 
boat to the head of the lake. They lay helpless for a whole day 
on that burning shore, unable to do more than throw the salt water 
over each other from time to time. The next morning, the ser- 
vant crawled away, in hopes of reaching Rihhah, which he did with 
extreme difficult}?-. He sent Costigan's horse down to the shore, 
with a supply of water. The poor young man was afive ; and he was 
carried to Jerusalem in the coolness of the night. He was taken care 
of in the Latin convent there; but he died in two days. During 
those hours of lingering, he never spoke of his enterprise ; and not 
a note concerning it was ever found among his effects. Any know- 
ledge that he might have gained has perished with him; and no 
reliable information could be obtained from his servant. Costigan's ; 
grave is in the Armenian burying-ground ; and there I saw the stone 1 
which tells his melancholy story. He died in 1835. — Another victim 
to Dead Sea enterprise has perished since we were there ; — I believe 
from drought and other hardship : and now there is a rumor of a new 
expedition for this year. It is difficult to imagine why it should not 
succeed, if the arrangements are made with any prudence. If a 
decked boat can really be conveyed to the Lake ; and if there are 
comrades enough in her to divide the labor and cheer each other ; and 
if they understand the management of a boat in a gusty lake, and are 
well supplied with provisions and water, — conditions indispensable to 
every enterprise of the kind, — one does not see why they should fail. 
I am not aware that any accidents have happened from the difficulty of 
the navigation of the Dead Sea, or from any singular causes of peril. 
The excessive heat may be avoided by choosing the most favorable 
season of the year ; and it must be possible to take provisions and 
water enough, supposing the Lake to be of the largest extent yet con- 
jectured. Some modern scientific travelers, who have surveyed it 
from various surrounding heights, declare its length not to exceed 
thirty miles: while Josephus says it is 721, and Pfiny 100 miles 
long. Its basin has probably contracted in length, in the course of ages. 

There appears to be no satisfactory evidence as to whether any fish 
are to be found in the Dead Sea. Our guides said that some smaU 
black fish have been seen there ; but others deny this. A dead fish has 
been found on the shore near the spot where the Jordan enters the lake; 
but this might have been cast up by the overflow of the river. It is 
said that small birds do not fly over this lake, on account of the delete- 
rious nature of its atmosphere. About small birds I cannot speak; but 
I saw two or three vuhures winging their way down it obliquely. — As 



THE DEAD SEA. 



427 



for the quality of the water, — those of the gentlemen who stayed behind 
to bathe declared, on rejoining us at lunch time, that they had found 
the common report of the buoyancy of the water of this sea not at all 
exaggerated, and that it was indeed an easy matter to float in it, and 
very difficult to sink. They also found their hair and skin powdered 
with salt when dry. But they could not admit the greasiness or sticki- 
ness which is said to adhere to the skin after bathing. They were 
positive about this : and they certainly did observe the fact very care- 
fully. Yet I have seen, since my return, a clergyman who bathed there, 
and who declared to me that his skin was so sticky for some days after- 
wards that he could not get rid of the feeling, even from his hands. 
And Dr. Robinson says, "After coming out, I perceived nothing of the 
salt crust upon the body, of which so many speak. There was a slight 
pricking sensation, especially where the skin had been chafed ; and a 
sort of greasy feeling, as of oil, upon the skin, which lasted for several 
hours."* The contrast of these testimonies, and the diversity which 
exists among the analyses of the waters which have been made by 
chemists, seem to show that the quality of the waters of the Dead Sea 
varies. And it appears reasonable that it should; for it must make a 
great difference whether fresh waters have been pouring into the basin 
of the lake, over various soils, after the winter rains, or a great evapo- 
ration has been going on under the summer's sun. In following the 
margin of the sea, we had to cross a creek, where my skirt was splashed. 
These splashes turned presently to thin crusts of salt ; and the moisture 
and stickiness were as great a week afterwards as at the moment. 

We wound among salt marshes and brakes, and round hillocks fea- 
thered with flowering reeds, and got into the bed of a stream, under the 
flecked shade of a shrub, to rest till the bathers overtook us. We were 
rather dismayed to find that we were still four or five hours from the 
convent of Santa Saba, where we were to stop for the night. The way 
was an almost continuous ascent, and in many parts a very steep one. 
We had to mount, from the deep depression of the valley of the Jordan, 
to some of the highest ground in Judea. We followed the ravine through 
which the Kedron runs (or did when it had any water) into the Dead 
Sea, — some of our party taking the right hand ridge and others the left. 
In a little while, the limestone hills below looked most fantastic, — com- 
pletely answering to our idea of the abodes of the first Christian her- 
mits. I wished we could have known where the great Essene esta- 
blishment of the time of John was placed: but I hope it was in a spot 
less desolate than any now before our eyes. By degrees the Jordan 
valley opened northwards, and the Dead Sea southwards, till the extent 
traversed by the eye was vast. How beautiful it must have been once, 
when the Jordan valley, whose verdure was now shrunk to a black line 
amidst the sands, was like an interminable garden, and when the cities 
of the plain stood bright and busy where the Dead Sea now lay blank 
and gray! As I looked back from a great elevation, I thought that so 
mournful a landscape, for one having real beauty, I had never seen. 



* Biblical Researches, II. 213. 



428 



EASTERN LIFE. 



I bade adieu raany times over to the Dead Sea; for it reappeared 
unexpectedly again and again. Up and up we went, for four hours, 
over stony hills, and winding round the bases of others, and through 
defiles, and over stretches of table land, scantily grassed : and then up 
hills again, following tracks which were at times hardly perceptible ; 
but from point to point catching a view of the Dead Sea, till we seemed 
to command its whole length. At last, it la}" like a great pond among 
its hot mountains, its deep blue paled into a gray, with streaks of white 
light above it, wherever there was a dark back ground. It is a singular 
object from such an elevation. 

The approach to the Convent of Santa Saba is wonderful. The tracks 
became so clear as to show that we were approaching w^ater and habi- 
tations. They led now down to the dry bed of Kedron, and now up 
the sides of its ravine, till w^e entered upon a road cut out of the rock, 
and fenced with a wall of loose stones on the side next the gorge. This 
road overhangs the ravine for, I think, about two miles. The sides of 
the chasm are very precipitous; but the grassy ledges here and there 
show that they were once terraced: and fragments of walls near the 
innumerable holes in the rocks show the traveler that here he is in the 
midst of the haunts of the old anchorites. The monks say that ten 
thousand of them lived here : and some old writers declare that there 
were fourteen thousand in Santa Saba's time. What a place to live 
in ! — so hot and dreary at best, and most awful in tempest! In such 
storms as belong to this country, this gorge mast be like the day of 
doom; — no room for the lightning, and the thunder rolling continuously, 
as the echoes will not let it die ! Cyril, the Monk of Jerusalem, and 
John Damascenus, and Euphemius lived here; and here young devo- 
tees were sent, to try whether they could bear monastic life in its severest 
form. 

Saint Saba was a monk of the fourth century, who had great powers 
of attraction, if, as is declared, he drew hither fourteen thousand ancho- 
rites, and enticed waters from the hard rock. There is a spring in a 
cavern at the bottom of the gorge which he created miraculously for the 
use of his followers in this parched region. The monks of his convent 
live under a very severe rule, never eating fiesh, and mortifying their 
feelings of Christian compassion by never admitting any woman within 
their gates, under any stress of weather or other accident. There are 
handsome accommodations for gentlemen, I was told, but of course I 
did not see them. Mohammedans are almost as fearful as women to 
the monks of Santa Saba, and they cannot enter the convent without 
liability to a large fine. We knew this beforehand, and we therefore 
carried tents enough for the ineligible members of the party, while the 
gentlemen hoped to get lodgings within its walls. 

It is an extraordinary place — its buildings so plunging down the pre- 
cipice as to make it difficult to say how much of the mass is edifice, and 
how much natural rock. We dismounted on a platform before the 
great gate — a gate substantial and secure enough to serve for the Bank 
of England. The platform was small, and dreadfully hot. Flies 
swarmed in the tents, where there seerned to be not a breath of air. 



CONVENT OF SANTA SABA. 



429 



Our fatigue to-day had been excessive ; our traveling comforts ran short, 
and it did not add to our ease to be told that some Bedoueens were 
hanging about, and had stolen two of the horses of our escort. News 
soon came that the horses were recovered, and that two muskets be- 
longing to the thieves had been taken and brought into our little 
encampment, where it seemed most likely that the owners would come 
for them in the night. One of the gentlemen advised me to take great 
care of my watch ; which I would thankfully have done, if I had known 
how. Our Mohammedan servants, however, were delighted at the op- 
portunity of protecting the Christian ladies ; and our dragoman lay 
down at one end of our tent, and the cook at the other, begging us to 
feel quite secure. One gallant youth of the company would not enter 
the convent while his mother and sister remained outside; and, there 
being no room for him in their tent, he spent the night on the hard 
rock — actually on an exposed shelf of rock — with his pistols and dag- 
ger on each side of him. All were glad, I believe, when the morning 
came, and we could ride away from flies and ants, and heat, and 
monks too holy to be hospitable, except to gentlemen who need it 
least. 

This convent is said to be in possession of manyMSS., some of which 
are inestimable. All I could learn of these was that the monks permit 
Turks to look at them, but neither Jews nor Christians; an arrangement 
which appears strangely at variance with that which makes it so diffi- 
cult for Mohammedans to enter the building. After we had left the 
place, we were told that a sort of outhouse — a square building on a 
rock, was open to women, if they chose to rest there; but we did not 
know this in time to compare its accommodations with those of the 
tent. 

Our three hours' ride to Jerusalem was delightful. The road led 
over the hills, and was seldom far away from the bed of Kedron. There 
is no finer view of Jerusalem than one from a hill side on this route, 
whence it appears perched on a height which seems incredible, while 
the intervening ground is concealed by the nearer eminences. In the 
valley of the Kedron, approaching the ancient Tophet, the cultivatioa 
was very rich — gardens and groves of figs, oranges, pomegranates and 
olives abounding. We passed Job's well, and under the rock caves of 
the valley of Gihon, and below the mournful Aceldama, and entered 
Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate, after an excursion full of interest and 
profit. 



430 EASTERN LIFE. 



CHAPTER V. 

JERUSALEM. — CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. — VALLEY OF 
GIHON.— POOL AND FOUNTAIN OF SIL0A3L— T03IBS OF THE PRO- 
PHETS.— MOUNT OF OLIVES.— GARDEN OF GETHSE3IANE.— TOMBS 
OF THE KINGS.— GOVERNOR- S HOUSE. 

I HAD avoided going to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Easter 
week, as I said before; but it was necessary to see it before leaving 
Jerusalem. I was relieved to find how easy it is to look at it as a mere 
sight; and but for what I witnessed within the walls, I should not have 
supposed that an educated person of any Christian denomination could 
have found his religious feelings involved in such a spectacle. To 
think of Christ and Christianity in the midst of this church is like hav- 
ing a reverie of sunrise from a mountain-top when one is looking at a 
puppet-show. One is called away from contemplating that light that 
lightens the Gentiles and is the glory of Israel, to look at such fabulous 
shows as it is a sin to put before the peasant and the infant. Yet here 
are grown men, conducting the display, apparently in earnest; and 
some who ought to know better giving that devout heed to what they 
say which is in truth the deepest irreverence. What a puppet-show is 
this place compared with the temples where I had seen the sculptured 
Osiris, armed v/ith the symbols of Justice and Judgment, executing his 
function upon the dead ! How noble are the traditions of Osiris, how 
calm and pure the records of his life and doctrine, compared with the 
dreadful things which are here said of a greater than Osiris — said on a 
spot within view of the Temple courts where he taught his simple doc- 
trine, and the Mountain where he passed his holy hours ! The only 
thing to be done in such places as this church is to put aside entirely 
the Christianity with which one is familiar, and look at what is before 
one's eyes as one would look upon the ceremonies of the Joss-house in 
China, or the exhibition of Medicine-Mystery at the Falls of the Missis- 
sippi. The pain of it is in all this going on in such a locality, and in 
the very name of the locality. 

The greater part of this church is as like as need be to a heathen 
temple, but without its grace. In grace, though not in gorgeousness 
and glitter, the shrines of Astarte in the time of Jezebel must have 
surpassed this idol-temple, profanely called by the name of Christ. 
From seeing the lamps, and marbles, and shining metals, and altars, 
and the chapels of the Latins, Greeks and Armenians, we were led to 
the nucleus of the building and its interests, the pretended sepulchre. 
Here, under one roof, we were shown the garden-tomb, with the stone 
on which the announcing angel stood; the place of the cross, — Mount 
Calvary being a stair-case of twenty-two steps, — and about a dozen 
sacred places, curiously disposed in an exact circle, a few feet distant 



CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 



431 



from each other. Those who, looking at the city from the Mount of 
Ohves, can beheve this ever to have been the site of Calvary, or of the 
tomb in the adjacent garden, may believe in this circular scene of sa- 
cred events. In the absence of all knowledge where Golgotha was, it 
would require something better than any existing evidence to prove 
that, as it was certainly outside the city, it could have been on the lower 
slope of Acra, close by the ravine between Acra and Moriah, which 
was filled up by the Asmonean princes ; a spot almost in the centre of 
the city, as it was both before and after the time of Christ. — As for the 
Calvary, the sockets of the three crosses are shown so close together, 
that there could have been no room for them to stand, except one be- 
hind another. The rending of the rocks must of course be displayed 
on the same spot; — a fissure cased with marble. And, as the apostle 
Paul says, that " as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made 
alive," the head of Adam was found in this fissure beside the cross. 
The pillar of scourging is brought here, and shown through an aperture. 
The monks admit that this pillar has been shifted, with the same ho- 
nesty with which their predecessors admitted to Dr. Richardson that 
the stone which assumes to have once closed the mouth of the sepulchre 
is a substitute for the real one ; the Armenians having stolen the latter, 
to exhibit at their convent on Mount Zion. 

I have before mentioned that neither Jew nor Mohammedan could 
enter this building with safety to hfe, — except on the set festival occa- 
sions when Turkish guards are wanted, and the Governor at Jerusalem 
has to keep the Latin and Greek Christians from tearing one another's 
throats. No one will wonder that the Jews do not desire to enter this 
idolatrous temple : but it is remarkable that the Mohammedans do not, 
so devoutly as they usually pay homage to the sacred places of the 
prophets, from Abraham to Christ. The reason in this instance is 
curious. They do not believe in the sepulchre, because they do not 
believe in the death of Jesus. They hold that he ascended alive into 
heaven, leaving the likeness of his face to Judas, who was executed. 
They think it probable that the body of the crucified Judas may have 
been laid here: so they would carefully keep away, even if they had 
the freest hberty to enter ; and they ridicule the mistake of the Chris- 
tians who pay their homage at the shrine of the traitor. How like 
the disputes of Fetish worshipers all this is ! and how wholly alien 
from all our conceptions of that devotion which Jesus taught and prac- 
ticed ! 

The circle of sacred places has to be made out by some bold stretch- 
ing, of course : so we were shown the stocks in which the feet of Jesus 
were put. When we reached the place where the soldier who struck 
Jesus came to repent, we all laughed, — the device was so exquisitely 
innocent! Yet even these things are not too much for some people, 
educated in England, who vie with these monks themselves in super- 
stition. A lady stood in solemn attitude, with folded arms and bowed 
head, while we examined the Calvary. When we moved on, she 
threw back her veil, and we recognized in her an English lady, now a 
Russian Countess, whom we met daily at the table d'hote at Cairo. 



! 
I 



432 



EASTERN LIFE. 



With a most extraordinary gesture, she cast aside her veil, threw open 
her arms, prostrated herself at the altar, and not only covered the place 
of the cross with kisses, but laid her head into the socket. I could 
look no longer, and hastened away to see the one truly interesting thing 
in the church. 

The tombs of Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin were once 
shown here; — sarcophagi on small marble pillars. It is said that the 
Greeks destroyed them: and we could find only the place where these 
heroes were said to have been buried. Two stone seats were called 
the tombs; but we understood them as merely pointing out the locality. 
The inscription on Godfrey's tomb is worth preserving, at the risk of 
some repetition. It is this : 

" Hie jacet inclytus Dux Godefridus de Bulion, qui totam istam 
terram acquisivit cultui Christiano ; cujus anima regnet cum Christo. 
Amen." 

His sword and spurs were here, — relics, of whose genuineness there 
is no reason to doubt. When I handled them, I was glad I had come. 
The sword is not very heavy — plain, and with a hilt which seemed to 
us to suit rather a small hand. 

In the area in front of the church, there is always a httle market of 
beads, crucifixes, carved si:iells, &c. ; and here the beggars collect, alarm- 
ing the stranger into giving alms, under penalty of contact with their 
clothes. The dragoman had to lay about him with a stout stick before 
we had any peace. 

Our refreshment while in this heathen metropolis of Christendom 
was in our walks in the environs. While wandering among the great 
natural objects, — the valleys, pools, and hills which superstition can- 
not meddle with or disguise, all was right, we could recognize for our- 
selves the haunts of Jesus, and enter into his thoughts. — We went out 
by the Bethlehem-gate, and along the Valley of Hinnom or Gihon. 
Here, and down to the junction of this ravine with the Valley of Jeho- 
shaphat, at the ancient Tophet, were once the idol-groves and shrines 
where, in the days of Solomon, the worship of Jehovah was joined 
with that of the lingering deities of the prior inhabitants. Here, in 
later days, did Jezebel and her royal train come forth to their festivals, 
and see the fires lighted in honor of Moloch, where children were passed 
through the flames, as a sort of charm, like that which subsists to this 
day among the peasantry of some Catholic countries. Here, in a yet 
later day, were kept up smouldering fires which consumed the dead 
bodies of malefactors and garbage, making the ravine that accursed 
place "where the worm died not, and the fire was not quenched;" — 
the place which was to the Hebrews the image of hell : and overhang- 
ing it, on the opposite hill, was the Potter's Field, where strangers 
were buried; and for so long a course of time, that many bones are 
still crumbling there. The groves and gardens of the idolaters are 
gone ; the harp and tabret (Toph, from which came the name of Tophet), 
which drowned the cries of the children, and exalted the mirth of the 
revelers, are now never heard there. The bodies of criminals, thrown 
there to stigmatize the scene of idolatry, and the filth of the city, have 



TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 



433 



ages since, been swept away by torrents which have themselves dis- 
appeared, having brought down earth which now yields food to man. 
The worm is dead and the fire is quenched; and there remain only the 
empty sepulchres, yawning in the red rock, and the desolate Aceldama 
on the hill. The soil washed down by the winter rains is detained by 
terracing, and made to yield thin crops of wheat and barley, and to sup- 
port a few scattered olive trees. Further down, at the confluence of 
the old torrent and Kedron, the soil is deeper, and rich enough to en- 
courage a full cuhivation. There, thickets of pomegranate and orange 
refresh the eye, and lead one to look round for the pools from which 
they are watered. 

The first we meet is the Well of Job, as it is now called; though it 
need not be explained that here is no more reason for supposing the 
ancient Arab Job to have been there than at any place in Europe. 
The Franks call it the Well of Nehemiah, which is more reasonable. 
This well was sounded by Pococke, and found to be 122 feet deep; yet 
it sometimes overflows. What a treasure this must always have been, 
to the city, and what an object to its besiegers, is clear. Turning up 
to the left, towards the Valley of Jehoshaphat, we came next to the 
Pool of Siloam, whose waters run off to fertilize the gardens at the 
junction of the valleys. This pool is fed from a spring above, by a 
channel in the rock. Its form is that of an oblong square, and it has 
the beauty which belongs to all ancient buildings here, — the crumbling 
stone, and tufts and garlands of weeds. The pool, which is usually 
called the Fountain of Siloam, further on, is more beautiful, from its 
waters lying in the deep shadow of the rock. We went down into a 
cave, and by a descent of broad wet steps, cut in the rock, to the dim 
pool, where an Arab woman was washing clothes, — her picturesque 
figure adding not a Httle to the beauty of the scene. This water was 
not used for drinking in former times, nor is it now. It was used, in 
the time of the Temple, for ablution by the priests, before flowing down 
in the rock to this cave ; and it has been since so traditionally employed 
as we saw it to-day, that both Monks and Mohammedans say it was 
there that the Virgin washed her son's linen. It was at the pool, and 
not this spring, that the blind man was supposed to have washed : and 
the spring must have been held pure in the days when the priest came 
down from the Water-gate above, with his golden ewer, to fetch water 
for the Temple service. 

Then we crossed the bed of Kedron, and began to ascend the slope 
of Olivet, under the excavated tombs. After mounting the steep ascent 
by a zigzag path for some way, we were led into a barley-field, through 
the midst of the corn, towards a group of olive trees, among whose roots 
was an entrance into a cave, where we should least have looked for 
one. Lighted candles were put into our hands, and we went in to ex- 
plore. It appeared to us an extraordinary place, and we wondered 
that we heard no more of it. We had heard of the Tombs of the Kings, 
and the Tombs of the Judges, but not of these Tombs of the Prophets. 
We well knew that this old valley had been watered with the blood of 
the prophets, as too often with the tears of true-hearted Hebrews ; we 
28 



434 



EASTERN LIFE. 



felt as if we trod upon their dust wherever we turned at the foot of this 
Mount: but it was a surprise to be told that we were actually standing 
in their sepulchre. Whether this is likely to be true, we did not 
know: but there can be no doubt of this being a place of sepulture. 
Many passages diverged from the entrance : and though there were no 
inscriptions, nor other express guidance, the recesses and niches showed 
plainly enough that these caverns, reached by a mere hole among the 
olive-roots, had been an abode of the dead. 

Then we went up (and not for the only time) to the summit of Oli- 
vet, which is really a long and toilsome walk from the city, and not a 
mere ascent of a gentle slope, as we had always at home supposed. 
The Convent of the Ascension stands on this ridge; and a family lives 
on the spot, to keep and show the Mosque which covers the foot-print 
of Christ, — the spot from which he sprang from the earth ! The other 
is in the Mosque of Omar. It seemed hard to encounter this idolatrous 
nonsense in such a place; but the Mount is high and wide; and else- 
where our feelings might remain undisturbed. We ascended the 
minaret, the second time we came here, for the sake of the view: and 
there is no other to be compared to it. We commanded the whole city, 
as it lay on the opposite summit; and a truly noble city it looked. 
Every cupola, and almost every stone, was distinct to the eye through 
that pellucid atmosphere, and the whole mass absolutely glittered 
against the clear sky. We could follow out by the flat roofs the nar- 
row winding streets, and mark the extent of the many unoccupied 
spaces now laid waste, but where there was once " prosperity within 
her palaces." How glorious must the Temple buildings have looked 
from here, towering over the Valley of Kedron, and the gilded roof of 
the Sanctuary flashing in the sun ! We could now see, as on a pre- 
ceding Friday, the gay groups scattered about the green lawns of the 
Mosque of Omar. Of old, other groups might have been seen there, 
among the colonnades of the temple courts ; — the gentiles in their court ; 
the money-changers and market people in the outer range, — the wo- 
men going up with their offerings, and the priests passing to and fro on 
their services. This was a sight, too, for the Roman soldiers who might 
come up hither from the encampment of their legion below. They 
would see the smoke of the sacrifice curling up into the clear evening 
sky; and the watchman relieving guard upon the walls. If the breeze 
blew hitherward, they might possibly hear the challenge of the senti- 
nels: and, at all events, the glorious martial music of the Hebrews, — 
the full swell of their wind instruments, — a music beyond compare for 
rousing valor or devotion, — would come on the night wind, to thrill or 
soothe the souls of the very foe. This was the spot for seeing how the 
Lion of Judah stood at bay with the hunters. From hence spread a 
wide view of that country, rich from side to side, — from where the 
Dead Sea glittered in the morning sun, and the plain of Jordan spread 
like a garden, on the east, to where, on the west, the pastures were 
clothed with flocks, and the hills teemed with corn, and oil, and wine, 
— that rich country which the Hebrews might have enjoyed in luxury, 
if they could have remained submissive to Rome. But that country 



MOUNT OF OLIVES. 



435 



lay almost deserted during the siege, because the inhabitants had gone 
up to Jerusalem to the Feast, and were shut in by the foe, and would 
not yield. Far away stretched the fruitful fields, and the young lambs 
were abroad without a shepherd; and here at hand, within these city 
walls, was the mother slaying her sucking child for food ! Here, while 
baited, exhausted, pierced on every side, did the Lion of Judah stand 
at bay with the hunters. 

This is not, however, the spot from which, according to tradition, 
Jesus pronounced the doom of the city. That spot is a little way down 
the hill; and it is marked by the ruins of a small convent. It might 
have been the place ; for it commanded the Temple buildings, and a 
fine view of the city. The lamentation commemorated here was not 
that invocation to Jerusalm, as the destroyer of the prophets, which is 
usually called the weeping of Christ over Jerusalem. That touching 
lament was uttered in the temple, at the close of a denunciation of the 
Pharisees. It was in leaving the Temple — that Temple of Herod 
which was new within the memory of the generation who heard him, 
and of which the nation was proud, — that the disciples pointed out to 
him "what manner of stones and of buildings" were there, and that he 
intimated the ruin that must come. They passed the gates, crossed 
the brook, and "sat upon the Mount of Olives over against the Tem- 
ple :" and then the disciples asked him privately what was the ruin 
which he had foretold. 

To this incident we owe the clearest exposition we are in possession 
of, of the belief and doctrine of Jesus in regard to his kingdom. That 
it was a spiritual kingdom, not to be won by war, and not hmited to 
the expulsion of the Roman power from Palestine, or the mere re-es- 
tablishment of the Mosaic system in its purity under a Jewish monarch, 
had long been evident. But from this moment it was made clear what 
his expectation was, as understood by his followers, and recorded by 
those who some years afterwards wrote his history for the information 
of the world.* Luke, in addressing Theophilus, undertakes to review 
and consolidate, from the many written accounts circulated at the time 
of his history,! the narrative and expositions which exhibit the facts and 
teachings of Christ; and he delivers to us, somewhat less at large than 
Matthew and Mark, what it was that Jesus declared on this occasion, 
concerning the approaching establishment of his kingdom: and that 
the expectation now sanctioned was entertained by the disciples 
throughout the existing generation, we know from the distinct state- 
ments of Paul (1 Thessalonians, IV. 13 — 18). The kingdom of Christ 
was to come in that generation, by the destruction of the existing world, 
when not only the Temple should be overthrown, but the powers of 
the world and the frame of nature. There was to be a new heaven 
and a new earth: Christ was to come, attended by the risen dead and 
by heavenly beings; and those of his followers who remained ahve 
were to meet him in the air, and be rendered immortal without the in- 



* Matt. XXIV. XXV.; Mark XIII.; Luke XXI. 



t Luke L 1—4. 



436 



EASTERN LIFE. 



tervention of death.* A spiritual kingdom was to be established which 
should supersede the Law : but the Law was to be carefull}'- maintained 
till then. He did not come to overthrow the Law and Prophets; but 
to fulfil them. His present mission was to restore the Mosaic system 
to its purity ; to rebuke the legal pedantry of the Pharisees, and dis- 
countenance their preference of the oral Law over the written ; to re- 
vive the soul and spirit of the Mosaic dispensation, in preparation for 
its abolition and his second coming. f After that second coming, his 
immediate followers were to be the Judges of his kingdom, sitting on 
twelve thrones, to judge the tribes of Israel.:}: Of the precise time 
when this should happen, he declared that he knew nothing. God 
alone knew this: but he himself could say only that that generation 
should not pass away till all this was fulfilled. § — When that generation 
had passed away, and the destruction was found to be limited to the 
conquest of the land and nation by the Romans, the record of what was 
said on this spot on Ohvet was naturally referred to a still future com- 
ing of Jesus : and it is known that this expectation troubled the Church 
and its rulers for some centuries, though, through the junction of the 
Oriental and Jewish philosophers, and the spread from Alexandria of a 
Platonizing Christianity, a more and more definite reference of this dis- 
course to a still future state of the human soul, excluding the doctrine of 
the resurrection of the body, gained ground. In ages when the study of 
the Sacred Records w^as confined to a small number of readers, and 
when those readers were of a class whose minds were sophisticated 
by the converging philosophies and superstitions of many nations and 
times, it may not be wonderful that so plain a statement of the expec- 
tations of Christ, — or of his recorders' understanding of them, — should 
have been slighted or perverted : but now that the records are in the 
hands of all men, and that men are learning that the Scriptures are re- 
cords and not oracles, it seems impossible that there should be much 
more dispute about as clear and plain a statement as ever was penned. 

No one spot of the tloly Land can be more interesting to a pilgrim 
than this. There can be no doubt of the incidents recorded. It is a 
narrative which could not have been written but from the life. In many 
other parts of the narratives selected for the use of the world from the 
great number written in the first generation, we have to remember and 
consider well the position and minds of the writers, the lapse of time 
during which fresh ideas had been flowing in upon them, and the color 
their narratives must inevitably take from the character of the people 
for whom they were written, in order to see as the writers saw, and to 
deduce from their various statements the intermediate truth by which 
we must abide. In general, it is no light work for the sincere and re- 
verent mind to read the gospel history, so as to come within reach of 
the actual voice of Jesus, and listen to it among the perplexing echoes 
of his place and time ; — to separate it from the Jewish construction of 

* Matt. XXIV. 30, 31; Mark XIII. 26, 27; Luke XXI. 27; 1 Thessalonians 
IV. ]5— 17. t Matt. V. 17—20. 

1 Matt. XIX. 28. 

§ Matt XXIV. 34, 36 ; Mark XIII. 30 ; Luke XXI. 32. 



GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 



437 



Matthew, — the traditional accretions and arrangements of Mark and 
Luke, — and the Piatonizing medium of John ; — a care and labor which 
it is profane and presumptuous to omit or make Hght of: but in this 
instance, the record is clear, and bears its historical truth upon the face 
of it. After his most vehement denunciations of the Pharisees and 
their teachings, as the vitiaters of the Law and the oppressors of the 
people, Jesus was leaving the Temple. His companions pointed out to 
him the grandeur and solidity of this new edifice, of which every reli- 
gious Jew was proud. He, believing the end of the existing world to 
be near, observed aloud how little this grandeur and solidity would avail. 
His disciples, perplexed, and unable to explain his meaning, came and 
inquired of him, as he pursued his way up the Mount of Olives. He 
sat down here, over against the Temple, at the point whence its build- 
ings looked most magnificent, and repeated his declaration that it would, 
be overthrown. From this he went on to say much of the time and 
the object; that it should be within the existing generation, after much 
war and pohtical convulsion, and in order to the establishment of the 
Messiah's kingdom : — a kingdom so spiritual as that the dead should 
rise and reign with him. He went on to declare the process and terms 
of this admission* of the dead to his kingdom, promising to own and 
admit the watchful, the pure, the faithful, the charitable, — those who 
should adhere to him in difficulty and danger, who should visit the 
sick, the poor, and the prisoners, and who should keep up a steady 
watch for his coming; and to disown and reject the careless, and cow- 
ardly and heartless. It is an affecting moment for the pilgrim who 
stands on that spot, with the same ground under his feet, and the same 
hill of Moriah before his eyes, when he surveys at once the three periods 
of time concerned ; — -the imposing, calm and prosperous aspect of the 
scene when the disciples asked that pregnant question: the tumult 
when the Temple was burning, and the hopes of the world seemed to 
be carried away in the smoke of the conflagration: and the present 
time, when a partial phase of Christianity has succeeded, under the 
name of a new prophet, and all looks outwardly dead, while the king- 
dom of Christ has actually come in a better manifestation than that of 
thrones,t and new wine,j: and a heavenly Jerusalem, — in the new hea- 
vens and new earth of the regenerated human mind. 

Descending the Mount, we came to a place of a different but very 
deep interest. We cannot be sure that the enclosure pointed out as 
the garden of Gethsemane is the precise spot : but I believe there is 
no reason why it should not be. It was the custom of Jesus to spend 
the night out of Jerusalem§ at the time of the Feasts; and this place 
was in his accustomed track; and it corresponds well with the particu- 
lars told of the approach of his captors. Gethsemane is now most for- 
lorn. It is an enclosure of nearly 200 feet square, where we found 
nothing but eight extremely old olive trees, which are kept standing 
only by little terraces of heaped stones built up about their roots. How 



* Matt. XXV. t Matt. XIX. 28. 

J Matt. XXVI. 29; Mark XIV. 25; Luke XXII. 30, § Luke XXI. 37. 



438 



EASTERN LIFE. 



old these hoary, shattered, straggling trees may be, we could not learn. 
No one seems to know what age the olive may attain. Of course, 
there is a desire to suppose them to be the identical trees under whose 
shade Jesus sat ; or, at least, suckers from their roots: but I suppose it 
will not be seriously maintained that olive trees really hve through 
eighteen centuries. It is enough to imagine that here was once a 
shade, whether of pomegranate, vine, and fig, or of an olive grove, 
where the Teacher came to rest from the sorrows of the city or the 
glare of the valley. If here he also sustained the anguish of rehn- 
quishing life so soon after the beginning of his course, — in such early 
days of his life and his mission, — before his followers had comprehended 
the spiritual character of his kingdom, or the nation had taken into its 
heart the living' faith that Jehovah their Kinofwas their Father and the 
Father of all men, this place is indeed the most sacred shrine of human 
sorrow ! I am glad to have seen it; to know how the shades of even- 
ing gathered about him at the foot of the Mount; and how it was that 
he saw the multitude issue from the city gate, and come down the 
steep hill-side road, with their torches flaring, and their arms ghttering 
in the yellow blaze. Step by step, he must have seen them approach, 
— out of the city, down the hill, over the brook, and up to the garden, 
where he came forth from under the trees to meet them, asking them 
why they came with tumult and arms, when it was never his way to 
conceal himself or to resist. 

We haunted this valley more than any other spot in or near Jerusa- 
lem : and at different times visited all the objects interesting to a tra- 
veler, except the Tomb of the Virgin (so called by the monks). We 
knocked at the gate more than once, but the knock was never answered ; 
and we felt no concern at this, for the place is one of no religious in- 
terest. We went among the more conspicuous sculptured tombs in the 
Valley of Jehoshaphat ; — those named after Absolom, Jehoshaphat, 
Zachariah, and St. James ; and one day, we found our way above and 
through the village of Siloam. There is no tower there now, to fall on 
men's heads. It is a very poor village, whose inhabitants look wild 
enough : but still, there is a grandeur about it, as there is about all such 
places, from the substantial character of the building. — We went, of 
course, to the Tombs of the Kings, to the north of the cit}'. The en- 
tablature here, sculptured with fruit and flowers, is considered the most 
elegant work of art in or about Jerusalem. It has an air of incongruity, 
however, a modernness, which prevented our feeling much interest 
about it; while, as a tomb, the interior was so like an imitation on a 
small scale of what we had seen in Egypt, without explanatory remains, 
that a cursory look satisfied us. Dr. Robinson conjectures'^ this to be, 
as Pococke had before suggested, the tomb of the Empress Helena, 
v^^ho is known to have elaborated a fine sepulchre for herself at Jerusa- 
lem. The position of this tomb is striking ; — in a deep trench, and ac- 
cessible only by an arch in a rock partition between two sunk areas: 
but within we found mere square chambers, with fragments of paneled 

* Biblical Researches, I. 536. 



TOMBS OF THE KINGS. 



439 



doors, and sarcophagi, very narrow, modern looking, and (at least, one) 
covered with small sculpture, — flowers and fruit. 

We asked permission to go to the top of the Governor's house, for 
the sake of obtaining the best view that can be had from without of the 
Mosque of Omar. This palace is actually on the site of Fort Anto- 
nia ; and it was strange to look down from it into the Temple inclosure, 
and think that both Temple and palace are preserving their function in 
such changed hands. We were seated on the roof with much civility, 
and coffee was sent us ; and we took our time about this last gaze upon 
Moriah. The Mosque and its appurtenances are truly very fine — gay 
and graceful in its elaborate structure ; and the springing arches of the 
avenues to its platform ; and the arcades round the circuit walls, where 
the priests' houses are ; and the row of cypresses, with worshipers at 
prayer beneath them — every incident conveying the sense of the cheer- 
fulness and lightness of a ritual and predestinarian religion. As we 
were turning into the Governor's house, and I had my thoughts full of 
Pilate and his dreaming wife, and Peter at the fire below, and the 
scenes which passed in the Judgment Hall, the voice of the Muezzin 
calling to prayer fell upon my ear. He was in the gallery of the 
minaret close at hand, at the corner of the inclosure of the Mosque of 
Omar. The pathetic cry sounded over the space, and thrilled on the 
unaccustomed ear ; but how much less moving and sweet is it than an- 
other summons once heard here — the call to the "wearv and heavy- 
laden !" 

On the last week-day, we were much in the bazaars, making pur- 
chases in preparation for our long ride to Damascus. Four soldiers 
and a citizen came to help us in our bargaining, which made it very 
amusing. Neither they nor any one else seemed to have anything to 
do; and we saw them to great advantage — playing with snakes on the 
shop-board, or smoking, or simply staring at us. While my compan- 
ions were groaning over the hardships of the pavement, I felt that I 
would not exchange the beauty of the streets for any pavement what- 
ever. The eye was gratified at every turn by the deep arches, vaults, 
interiors, weedy old walls, the very handsome people, the black sha- 
dows, and pencils or floods of light. 

We spent that Saturday evening very pleasantly at the Consul's, 
meeting some members of the Mission, the extraordinary old lady who 
took such good care of herself on board the steamer on the Mahmoo- 
dieh Canal, and a party of officers from the English brig Harlequin, 
then lying off" Beyrout. From these officers we heard a world of Eu- 
ropean news, after our long wandering in African and Asian deserts; 
and in one of them I found a member of a family of old friends in my 
native city. It was strange enough, after talking over old Norwich 
and its ways, and the state of the dying O'Connell, and various doings 
in Parliament, to walk home through the streets of Jerusalem, and see 
the moon hanging above the Mount of Olives. 

Our last day, Sunday, was very quiet. We walked only to the 
church ; but we took a ride towards Bethlehem, to try our new horses; 
the horses which carried us to Damascus first, and afterwards over the 



440 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Lebanon, and down to Beyrout. My chestnut mare was the best of the 
lot. 1 liked her much to-day ; but I was desired not to set my heart 
upon her, as there was no security for my ever seeing her again. If 
any one should, within twenty hours, bribe the owner, I might be put 
off with some sorry beast that would spoil my pleasure. Next morn- 
ing, however, there she was ; and we never parted again till I had to 
leave the saddle for the steamer; and she carried me perfectly well the 
whole way. 

We were glad to have one more view of Bethlehem, which we had 
not expected to see again. We rode as far south as the convent of St. 
Elias ; and thence Bethlehem looked well on its hill promontory, com- 
manding the plain towards Moab. 

The next morning, April 12th, we set forth for Samaria. 



CHAPTER VL 

SAMARITANS.— SIMON IMAGUS.— WAYSIDE SCENERY.— JACOB-S WELL 
AT SYCHAR.— SAMARITAN SYNAGOGUE.— SEBASTE.—DJENEEN. 

It was no light event to be setting forth for Samaria,— to be leaving 
the kingdom of Judah for that of Israel. What we had to bear in 
mind in this expedition, was briefly this. 

Samaria was given to the posterity of Joseph. It was inhabited by 
the tribe of Ephraim and half that of Manasseh. David and Solomon 
reigned over Israel and Judah united. After them, the kingdoms were 
separated, and Shechem or Sychar, now Nablous, already a very an- 
cient city, was made the capital of the kingdom of Israel. We were 
going now among the haunts of Elijah and Elisha; and over the places 
where the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth reached its utmost splendor, 
under the influence of the zeal of Jezebel, who brought in the gods of 
her native region to vie with the God of Israel. We were approaching 
the meeting point of the religious and other ideas of the Egyptians who 
came up in alliance, and the Syrians who came hither from Damascus 
through the great valley of the Lebanon, sometimes in friendship, and 
sometimes in enmity. To this rendezvous of peoples and ideas, the 
Assyrians also came, and wrought more powerfully on the mind of the 
Samaritans than even the Egyptians and the Syrians. The inhabitants 
of Samaria had before been of mixed race, worship, and character of 
mind ; and when their ablest men were carried away to Nineveh, and 
colonized in Assyria, and Assyrians were left in their places, to inter- 
marry with the native women, and establish themselves in the towns 
and fields of Samaria, it is no wonder that the Jews dreaded intercourse 
with them as a mongrel and hnlf-idolatrous race, and refused to let them 
assist at the re-building of the Temple at Jerusalem. If the Samaritans 
wished to hold to the Law of Moses, and to worship Jehovah, and yet 
were excluded from assisting to re-build the Temple at Jerusalem, it is 
no wonder that they built a temple for themselves on Mount Gerizim : 



THE SAMARITANS. 



441 



and again, if the Jews wished to preserve any appearance of unity of 
race and faith, it is no wonder that they refused to have any dealings 
wdth a people who had for generations intermarried with heathens, and 
regarded Jehovah as only the chief of several gods. And if the Jews 
believed it essential, as they now did, that there should be but one altar 
of Jehovah, it is no wonder that they regarded with horror the build- 
ing of the temple on the mountain. It was natural, again, that lax- 
minded Jews, who had broken the Law, by marrying heathen wives 
and otherwise, and who yet wished to worship Jehovah in his temple, 
should resort to Sychar, to join the Samaritans, — thus rendering their 
race yet more mixed. Here were causes enough for there being "no 
friendly dealings" between the Jews and the Samaritans. — But there 
was, besides, the quarrel about their Scriptures, — each people charging 
the other with having falsified the texts about the mountains Ebal and 
Gerizim, and each claiming to hold the true copy of the Pentateuch. — 
The quarrel had been fierce for above five hundred years before the 
time of Christ. How many suns had gone down upon the wrath of 
these neighbors, who claimed the same origin and the same God ! It 
was bitter in proportion to its duration, and to the close connection of 
the foes : so that it was only natural that the people of a Samaritan 
village should refuse to permit Jesus to rest there,* because his face 
was turned to Jerusalem; and that James and John should ask for the 
destruction of this village by fire from heaven. And how beautiful 
was the rebuke ! What an exemption from Jewish prejudice and 
human anger was there in the reply which showed that a greater than 
Elias was here ; — one whose mission was not one of vengeance, but of 
redemption ; — who came, " not to destroy men's lives, but to save 
them !" How soothing and uniting was the declaration that the old 
quarrel about the place of worship was to be left behind and forgotten; 
— that henceforth worship need be confined neither to the Mountain 
nor Jerusalem, but should be universal, — in spirit and in truth ! — And 
how were rebuke and charity combined in the parable, when the good 
works of the alien Samaritan were exalted above the official sanctity 
of the Priest and of the servant of the Temple at Jerusalem ! 

And then, coming down lower than the time of Christ, a great in- 
terest attaches to Samaria. The Book of Acts (chap, viii.) tells how 
freely the country people of Samaria accepted the gospel, and were re- 
ceived into its fellowship, on the preaching of Philip : and several of 
the Fathers give us very curious and interesting accounts of the False 
Christ whose dealings with the apostles are briefly related in that chap- 
ter of the Acts. Irenseus, Origen, and Eusebius give copious accounts 
of this Simon; in the reading of which, however, it is necessary to re- 
member the bias under which they wrote. — It appears that two false 
Christs, conspicuous above all others, arose, as Eusebius says,t imme- 
diately after the ascension of Jesus, claiming to be gods, but in reality, 
actuated by devils : — -these were Simon of Samaria, and Apollonius 
of Tyana. With the latter, we have nothing to do : but Simon is an 



* Luke IX. 52—56. 



t Hist. Ecclesiast., Lib. II. cap. xii. 



442 



EASTERN LIFE. 



interesting historical personage to those who follow the footsteps of 
Jesus and the Apostles through Samaria. 

Simon was half a Jew, of the class of the Speculatists, and the per- 
son who, bringing the doctrines of the East into connection with those 
of the Jewish sects, founded, not directly and purposely, but by the 
spread of his tenets, the schools of the Gnostics, to which may be 
traced many of the corruptions wath which Christianity is overlaid to 
this day. AVhen the apostles visited Samaria, they found Simon in 
great power and activity. His Samaritan hearers listened eagerly to 
his attacks upon the great prophets of the Jews ; — even upon Moses 
himself. They exalted his miracles, told of his power of raising the 
dead, and, as Eusebius says, regarded him with great reverence, as one 
come from God. They had, as yet, hardly heard of the Prophet of 
Nazareth; and it appears, from the account in the Acts, that Simon 
would willingly have joined the Nazarene community, but for the 
cause of alienation which arose. He appears to have been an earnest 
man, — an enthusiast in the use of his own powers of healing, and in 
the practice of his arts of magic ; and he formed the low conception of 
Christianity which appears in his offer to Peter to purchase the com- 
munication of the powers which he saw exercised by the disciples. 
We must remember that there \vrs reality at the bottom of the practice 
of Magical arts in the East; and that Simon, like other eastern sages 
and prophets, held his arts of healing and divination as scientific secrets. 
He was willing to pay for accessions to his knowledge; and his sin- 
cerity is proved, not only by this offer, but by his consternation when 
he found how his offer was reprobated as gross impiety. " Then an- 
swered Simon and said. Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these 
things which ye have spoken come upon me."* When the Christian 
disciples heaped shame and accusation upon him, he resumed his 
former position and office, and preached his own doctrine, in opposi- 
tion to theirs; and by nothing has Christianity suffered more; for the 
learning and high gifts of Simon Magus gave him a hold upon minds 
of no mean order, in which the two doctrines became to a great extent 
united, — grievously to the degradation, of course, of Christianity. 

Simon adopted the belief prevalent among the Egyptians, the specu- 
lative Jews, and the nations east of them, that the Divine Idea of the 
Universe, — sometimes called Wisdom,! sometimes the Word, some- 
times the Creative Power, is manifested to men in human form. 
Among the triads and trinities of the heathen world, this Intelligence 
or Wisdom was the female member, — the Isis of Egypt, tlie Mother 
Ennoi'a of Simon Magus. This second person of the triad was called 
the Virgin of God, and the Spouse of God; and when the female titles 
were put away, — as when Osiris was the personage in question, the 
titles were "the first-born of God," — "the only Son of God," "the 
universal Man," and many others. t The third function of the Triad 
was fulfilled by the Operative Power which was the necessary conse- 



* Acts YIII. 24. t Proverbs YIII. 22—31. 

J Salvador, "Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine," I. 199, 200. 



SIMON MAGUS. 



443 



quence of the Primitive Will and the first-conceived Idea, or Intelli- 
gence ; which Will and Idea must be carried out into action. Many- 
sages had taught this doctrine, in various countries, for centuries ; but 
I do not know that any one before Simon Magus attempted to exhibit 
any Personifications, beyond that of divine messages in their own per- 
sons. But Simon went to a length which proves what his own enthu- 
siasm must have been, to induce toleration from his own mind, and 
from others. He presented to his followers the second person of his 
triad in the form of a woman named Selena, whom he called the Divine 
Idea. He himself assumed to be God; or, let us suppose, a manifes- 
tation of the spirit of God : and he was received as he desired. Justin 
Martyr, in his Second Apology, mentions a pillar which in his time 
existed at Rome, and which bore inscribed "Simoni Deo Sancto :" and 
Irenaeus says, " This Simon, therefore, was received by many as God." 
The Simonian doctrine was, briefly, that from this Virgin-mother En- 
noi'a had sprung a secondary order of beings, by whom the world was 
created and all things done, under the limitation that the progeny was 
to remain ever attached to the parent, — the Active Agency to the Pri- 
mal Thought. The progeny were disobedient, and held the mother 
captive, while they wrought all manner of abuses, and confounded ideas 
of good and evil. The Law of Mosps and the prophets were declared 
(under the Samaritan prejudices of the philosopher), to share the con- 
fusion of the work of these fallen agents. Restoration could be hoped 
for only through the Teacher, who had come upon earth in a human 
form, to redeem mankind from their fall from their original purity, by 
bringing them a renovation of their nature. He presented himself to 
them as being "at once the image of the true Eternal Father, the true 
Son and Messiah of God, and the true Holy Spirit."* Simon and 
Selena were worshiped as Jupiter and Minerva, also. How strange 
it is, no one can imagine who has not felt it, to find in Simon Magus 
the meeting point of so many ideas in a mind which once never 
dreamed of any connection among them. When in m}' childhood, I 
read of the first case of Simony in Christian society, the case from 
which the sin took its name, — and pitied the sincere but low-minded 
convert who met with such rebuke and punishment from Peter, how 
little did I dream that the idea of this man would expand till I should 
see in him the chief of False Christs, the personifier of the allegories 
of the East, the Osiris of a known age, a Jupiter within our era, and 
the latest association of interest with the soil of Samaria, whose ear- 
liest interest arises from its being the territory of the children of Jo- 
seph ! The blame of corrupting Christianity by the infusion of his 
doctrine into the traditions of the disciples, is not due to Simon him- 
self. He opposed the disciples, and their converts, and his disciples 
opposed each other ; but we have no reason to believe that he so far 

* Salvador, "Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine,"' I. 200, 201. Irena?us, as cited by Sal- 
vador, says, " Hie igitur Simo a multis quasi Deus glorificatus est, et docuit semetip- 
sura esse qui inter JudEtos quidem quasi Filius adparuerit, in Samaria autem quasi 
Pater descenderit, et in reliquis vero gentibus quasi Spiritus Sanctus adventarit."" — 
IrencBus advers. Hares. Lib. I. cap. 20. 



444 



EASTERN LIFE. 



embraced Christianity, after Peter's repulsion, as to have the power of 
immediately adulterating it. It was through his schools that the cor- 
ruption reached Christianity, when men who held both doctrines beo-an 
fatally to blend them, overlaying the simple teachings of Jesus with 
mysteries and allegories and fables, as injurious to the honor of God 
and the moral operation of the gospel as the devices of the Pharisees 
had been in the far less important case of the system of Moses. That 
Simon Magus lived on the hill towards which we were now setting our 
faces, is a misfortune to many a child in England born within this year. 
That the company of the apostles should have had among them such a 
poet and theologian as John the Evangelist, and that he should have 
become the apostle of Asia, and have applied its theosophy to the inter- 
pretation of scriptural records and facts, may occasion perplexity and 
uneasiness to Bibliolators ; but it cannot fail to work well in the end. 
As Salvador says* of John and his writings, " the purpose that he had 
of absorbing into the doctrine of his master the highest theosophic ideas 
of the oriental Jews among whom he spent the greater part of his life, 
caused him to have recourse to forms, and to a language altogether 
whose meaning we may suppose to have been never familiar to his 
eleven colleagues. Far, however, from complaining of the differences, 
of the contradictions even, which we meet with in this quadruple 
monument (the Four Gospels) we must see that these differences con- 
stitute its true value: they magnify it by preserving the simple and in- 
voluntary impress of men and circumstances, and by connecting it 
together with all the writings of the rising school, with monuments of 
an older date, and with the general state of the region and of the 
times." 

Our last view of Jerusalem was very fine. We looked back from a 
ridge on the Nablous (the northern) road, and saw it lying, bright and 
stately, on its everlasting hills : but it looked lower than from most 
other points of view, from the Moab mountains forming its lofty back- 
ground. We descended the slope before us, and lost sight of the Holy 
City for ever. 

Again we were struck with the vivid coloring of the scenery. All 
this day, the hills were dressed in brilliant hues ; — the soil, red, gray, 
and brown ; the tilled portions of the brightest green ; and the shadows 
purple or lilac. All the hills show traces of having been once ter- 
raced ; and they were still completely so in the neighborhood of our 
encampment this evening, — the terraces following the strata of the 
stone, which all lay slanting. This gives a singular air of wildness 
to the most cultivated spots. Here and there were basins among the 
hills, full of corn, or with their red soil dropped all over with fig and 
olive trees : and the upland tracks wound among slopes all strewn with 
cistus, iris, cyclamen and anemones, and bristling with tall flowering 
hollyhocks. In the hollows were deep old wells, or stone cisterns, 
where the cattle were crowding to drink. A few camels were brows- 
ing, here and there, in the dells : and we met several groups of Arabs 



* "Jesus Christ et sa Doctrine,"" 1. 152, 153. 



WAYSIDE SCENERY. 



445 



with their asses, carrying corn to the city. The stone villages on the 
heights were striking, as we found them everywhere in Palestine. 
Beer, ten miles from Jerusalem, was on a hill to the right. Travelers 
usually stop there, the first night after leaving the city : but we in- 
tended to proceed to Einbroot : and when we reached Einbroot, we 
were disposed to go further. We had not left Jerusalem till near 
noon ; and the afternoon and evening were charming. We were once 
more alone too, — our party of four, with servants ; and the saving of 
fatigue by the smallness of our number was great. We expected to 
meet the rest of the caravan at Nazareth, or at least at Damascus ; and 
meantime, it was more convenient, from the character of the country, 
to travel in smaller parties. An accident retarded the largest party, so 
that we had left Nazareth before they arrived ; and we saw no more 
of our Desert comrades, except of two of the gentlemen, who were at 
Damascus when we arrived. 

Einbroot is beautiful on its hill, with its richly tilled slopes and val- 
leys undulating all about it, and its olive trees casting their long even- 
ing shadows on the red soil. The road was very narrow and stony, 
between terraces of corn and groves of olive. Just pass Einbroot, we 
descended into a hollow, and then rose again, and came out upon a 
green waste place, where the cattle were drinking at an old-fashioned 
well. Then we entered a cultivated valley, where a promontory of 
the richest green, lustrous in the last rays of the sun, crossed our path. 
Winding round it, we entered the shadow, and watched the sunshine 
withdrawing from the heights. The valley narrowed to a ravine ; and 
there were holes, like tombs, high up in the rocks on either hand. The 
wild-flowers made a garden of this glen ; and I saw, for the first time, 
a honeysuckle in full blossom, climbing the rock to a great height. 

Where this ravine narrowed to a pass, we observed the remains of 
a very substantial building, which looked like a fort. It was on our 
left hand ; and just beyond it, sunk in a platform of rock, under a pre- 
cipice garlanded with ferns, was one of the beautiful old pools of the 
country. It was now 6 p. m., and we were glad to find that we were 
to encamp beside the pool, on the platform under the precipice. I 
hastened back on foot to the honeysuckle, and brought home a charm- 
ing handful of flowers. 

While we were at dinner, a sound of scuflling was heard outside : and 
when Alee next entered, he was out of breath. We afterwards heard 
the whole story ; and we were amused to find how zealous our Mo- 
hammedan servants could be in the cause of "Christian infidels." 
Some Arabs, with their loaded mules, had come with the intention of 
encamping beside the pool : and, on finding the ground partly occu- 
pied, though there was plenty of room left, they became abusive, and 
wondered aloud what business these damned Christians had in their 
country. Alee resented this, and threw the speaker down over the 
tent-ropes. There was then a sharp scuffle ; and the cook coming to 
help, and the Arabs falling one upon another over the tent-pegs in the 
dark, they had the worst of it, and went off vowing vengeance. We 
heard no more of them, however. 



446 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Our destination the next day (Tuesday, April 15th) was the very 
ancient city of Shechem or Sychar, now Nablous. The cistus literally 
strewed the ground to-day; and the hollyhocks, of pale and deep lilac, 
and of red, grew finely. There was yellow jessamine also. — From 
an elevation of the rocky hills, we caught a peep of the blue Mediter- 
ranean, — for the first time since leaving Alexandria. 

We learned to-day what is meant when people speak of the roads 
in Palestine. The nearest resemblance to our English idea of a road 
is where a narrow lane, heaped with stones, runs between two walls. 
Elsewhere, there is a just practicable passage over shelves of rock, 
with a bit of irregular staircase at each end, to get up and down by. 
The pleasantest track is that which runs through olive groves, and 
along fields, and across a green plain : and v/ith all their inequalities, I 
believe these paths are much less fatiguing than a broad, regular, dusty 
road would be. The wildness and apparent privacy have a charm 
which compensates for some difficulty. 

We pursued to-day the long and fertile Hawarrah Valley, where 
the crops were rich for miles together, and villages were thickly planted 
on the eminences. Still, though we saw many settlements, we were 
persuaded that there must be more out of sight, — so vast did the pro- 
duce appear in comparison with the population. We were always 
wondering what became of the immense quantity of wheat and barley 
we saw growing, — to say nothing of the fruit. And this, in a country 
which we had imagined, from the accounts of travelers, to be a spec- 
tacle to mankind, for desertion and barrenness ! Travelers have told 
what they saw, no doubt ; but they went, for the most part, at a different 
season. I imagine that we saw Palestine in its very best aspect; and 
many travelers have happened to be there in the intervals between the 
three crops of the year, when the stony, uncovered soil must, indeed, 
look parched and dreary. In this month of April, it was green, fresh, 
and flowery; and we asked one another repeatedly whether every 
mile of the land was not beautiful. I found it full of charms, from 
end to end. 

As we proceeded to-day, the ground rose in a succession of table- 
lands, of which there was a series of three in leaving the Hawarrah 
Valley. We now began to observe the walnut and the mulberry in 
the orchards, and a general growing richness as we approached " the 
parcel of ground that Jacob bought," opposite the opening of the valley 
of Sychar. 

At the north-east corner of the Gerizim range, the road parts off, — 
one branch ascending the mountain, and the other winding round its 
base. I was riding on before; and seeing the baggage-mules beginning 
to ascend, and having a sign from the dragoman to proceed, I took the 
upper road; but my companions pursued the lower, which led them 
more direcdy to the great object of this day's travel, — Jacob's Well. 
I was fortunate in taking the upper road, for it afforded me a fine view 
of the whole scene at once: and it was not difficult to get down to ray 
party afterwards. When I had passed the shoulder of the mountain, 
the valley of Sychar lay below me, rich with groves and gardens, and 



Jacob's well. 



447 



with the old sepulchres of Mount Ebal yawning in the face of the 
opposite precipices. At the upper end, to my left, lay the bright town, 
nesding in the valley, and extending completely across it, — even 
stretching a litde way up the slopes of Gerizim. To my right, the 
valley opened out into the green plain, — Jacob's " parcel of ground," 
where a small village lay at the foot of Ebal, and a white Sheikh's 
tomb rose amidst the green. Another little plain joined on upon 
Jacob's possession ; and it was bounded by a perfect semicircle of 
hills. Below me, to tlie right, lay some small clusters of ruins, where 
I saw my companions dismount, and where I soon joined them. 

The clusters of ruins below consisted of a mill, with a channel for 
water, two deep shafts in the roof, and a chamber below : — and, near 
at hand, of the remains of a church, which was built very early in the 
Christian era, to honor the spot. Four granite pillars are visible. 
The well itself might easily be passed by unnoticed. Its mouth looks 
like a mere heap of stones : but several travelers who have descended 
into it, — Maundrell for one, — describe it so as to leave no doubt that 
all parties, — Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Mohammedans, — who 
agree that this is the true old Jacob's well, are right. Maundrell found 
15 feet of water at a depth of 105 feet (inclusive). Moreover, there 
is no other well in the neighborhood, except one high up on Mount 
Gerizim. There are many fountains in the valley of Sychar, which 
one traveler or another has carelessly taken for wells; so that the de- 
scriptions of Jacob's Well are very various. Certainly, the clear foun- 
tains and spreading reservoirs in the valley are more tempting to the 
imagination, and soothing to the eye of the tired traveler than this hole, 
where no water is to be seen; but there can be no question of this 
being the spot on which the narrative* represents Jesus as sitting to 
rest, and asking water of the Samaritan woman. As for the common 
objection, that this well is nearly a mile and a half from the city, and 
that the woman would not have come so far for water when she must 
have been able to obtain it at many nearer places, I see nothing in it, 
as the narrative does not mention that the woman came out of the city. 
She is not called a woman of Sychar, but a woman of Samaria; — a 
country-woman, probably, living near the well. When she wished 
to call witnesses, to come and hear the words of the way-farer, she 
naturally went into the city ; but there is no mention of her being an 
inhabitant of it. 

Jesus had not intended to enter the town, it is clear. He was 
waiting here while his disciples went up the valley, to buy food in the 
town; and then they would have followed the road through the plain 
to Samaria. There was no inducement to any Jew to enter any 
Samaritan city, if he could avoid it. But when the townsmen came 
out to him, and showed an open-minded interest in hearing of the 
Messiah, and of its having become lawful in the mind of a Jew, to 
worship elsewhere than in the Temple, Jesus entered the city, and 
abode there two days.t — No scene of these ancient incidents is more 



* John IV. 



t John IV. 40. 



448 



EASTERN LIFE. 



clear and interesting than this. It is impossible not to see his very- 
gestures when he spoke of "this mountain," — the Gerizim which rose 
above him, — and when he bade his hearers lift up their eyes, and look 
on the fields, — already "white unto the harvest;" — the tilled lands of 
Jacob's plain which stretched before him. The simplicity of the contro- 
versy, in the woman's statement of it, and appeal to the authority of fore- 
fathers ; and the Teacher's assertion of the superiority of Jewish worship, 
— "ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship;" — 
the naturalness of this is so exquisite as to give on the spot the impres- 
sion of modernness; and to make one feel more like an actual spectator 
of the incident than I had ever yet felt, in any of the sacred localities. — 
No part of the narrative is, to my mind, more striking than the offer 
of hospitality, — the invitation to Jesus to stay in the city. The sorest 
point of the controversy being this temple on Gerizim, — the Jews 
abhorring it, and the Samaritans feeling the hardship of their forefathers 
having been excluded from the Jerusalem Temple,- — how the news 
must have run through Sychar that a teacher had come from Jeru- 
salem itself, who said that men might worship any and everywhere! 
Here was an opening for peace making, and for something higher 
still ; for exalting and spiritualizing the religious conceptions of earnest 
and anxious inquirers. Here were " friendly dealings," indeed, between 
Jews and Samaritans ; and in the higher party, that loving care which 
made him ever vigilant over the perplexed and wandering, to bring 
them home, that there might be "one fold and one Shepherd." 

Our ride up the valley, as far as the town, was delightful. The 
fountains, and fields and orchards make a perfect garden of the place; 
and the people were standing or sitting under the shade of the trees. 
The sepulchres in the rock reminded us of old days; and so did the 
mountains, to the right hand and the left. The difference in the aspect 
of Ebal and Gerizim is less marked than we had been led by books to 
suppose; and it was some time before I felt sure that Gerizim was, on 
the whole, more fertile than Ebal. — Joshua could not have chosen a 
nobler spot for the solemn ceremony of instructing the people in the 
threatening and promises of the Law.* He placed six of the tribes at 
the foot of the one mountain, and six at the foot of the other; and 
caused to be proclaimed to the people those noble and awful blessings 
and curses which were long afterwards recorded at length in the Book 
of Deuteronomy.t 

It was all very pleasant riding up the valley; but now we had to 
enter the town, and even to pass along its whole length. I have men- 
tioned that in Egypt I found this process very disagreeable. Here, it 
was worse than in any place, before or after. To make part of an 
equestrian troop, (looking only too like Batty's troop at home;) to 
pace as slowly as possible, one by one, through the ill-paved, narrow 
bazaars, where one's horse starts or shies at a blacksmith's fire or a 
fluttering curtain; — and to feel conscious all the while of a dress which 
is thought odious, and which was always dusty at the close of a day's 



* Joshua VIII. 33. 



t Deuteronomy XXVII., XXVIII. 



NABLOUS. 



449 



travel;' — all this was disagreeable enough: but at Nablous, there are 
other desagremens. The bigotry of the people is so great that till of 
late years, no Christian was permitted to set foot within the gates. 
Ibraheem Pasha punished the place severely, and made the people so 
desperately afraid of him that they observe his commands pretty much 
as if he had power in Syria still. One of his commands was that 
Christians should not be ill-treated ; so we entered Nablous, and rode 
through it to our encampment on the other side. During our passage, 
I had three slaps in the face from millet stalks and other things thrown 
at me ; and whichever way we looked, the people were grinning, 
thrusting out their tongues, and pretending to spit. My party blamed 
me for feeling this, and said things which were undeniably true about 
the ignorance of the people, and the contempt we should feel for such 
evidences of it. But, true as all this was, I did not grow reconciled to 
being hated and insulted ; and I continue to this day to think the lia- 
bility to it the great drawback of Eastern travel. 

The town is large, — the bazaars handsome, — and the women becom- 
ingly dressed in cream-colored mantles or veils, bordered with red. 
Just outside the further gate, there were lepers again, — a forlorn com- 
pany ranged under the trees, holding out their poor maimed hands for 
charity. — Our tents were pitched on a grassy, weedy plot, sprinkled 
over with fruit trees, and with springs and gardens all about; and, of 
course, with the pair of mountains still rising on either hand. Ebal 
exhibited a large prickly-pear garden ; and Gerizim a fine face of orange 
rocks, tissured with dark clefts, and fringed with brushwood. 

After dinner, we were eager to be walking. We wanted to obtain a 
view of the town from above it; and I had some little hope that before 
we returned we might have learned something of the few remaining 
Samaritans: and perhaps have seen them and their precious MS. 
Every one knows that this MS., though not 3,500 years old, as the 
Samaritans pretend, is yet a very valuable copy of the Pentateuch. It 
is interesting, from its value in the eyes of scholars, and from its being 
a fine specimen of Samaritan text:* and no less from the firm faith 
with which the Samaritans regard it as an antique of 3,500 years old. 

We ascended the slope on our left, — that of Gerizim, — passed the 
Mohammedan cemetery, and attained a point whence we had a noble 
view, in the last sunlight, of this beautiful city. It could hardly have 
looked more beautiful when it was the capital of Samaria. Its houses, 
with their flat white roofs, are hedged in by the groves which surround 
the town : vines spread from roof to roof, and from court to court : 
four palm trees spring up in the midst ; and higher aloft still, a graceful 
minaret here and there. 

Here we were told, to my delight, that we might see the Samaritans 
and their synagogue. We were led down into the town, and along 
some low arched passages, and across a small court, to the synagogue. 
There the Samaritans dropped in, to greet us ; and we saw almost all 
of the sect in the place. It was not very easy to communicate freely 



29 



* See p. 95. 



450 



EASTERN LIFE. 



with them. Our dragoman did his best to interpret: but he, a Mo- 
hammedan, was not very clear about the distinctions between Jews, 
-Samaritans and Christians : and we are not very sure of the information 
obtained through him. We thought these Samaritans good-looking 
people, and all the better looking for the high, helmet-like, antique 
turban that they wore. They said their number was sixty at Nablous, 
and forty elsewhere ; — only a hundred in the whole world. This they 
declared over and over again. They said — what we could hardly 
credit — that their chief priest was not here, but at Genoa, — with the 
remnant of their sect. They keep their great feasts, — three in the 
year,— as punctually as the Jews ; going up to Gerizim as the Jews used 
to go up to the Temple ; and reading the Law from sunrise till noon. 

The Synagogue is a small, ordinary-looking chapel, within a cur- 
tained recess of which is kept the old copy of the Pentateuch. It was 
shown to us, after some entreaty on our part. I petitioned to be al- 
lowed to touch it, " out of respect:" but the priest said that even he 
must wash and put on new clothes before he could touch it : and I 
observed, indeed, how carefully he held it by the ends of the rollers, 
within which it is furled, like the copies of the Law in Jewish syna- 
gogues. He never for a moment ceased his care not to touch the vel- 
lum. The text is clear, small and even ; — the lines continuous, and 
not broken into words. The ancient vellum is much tattered, of 
course ; but it is carefully mounted on stout parchment. It was a 
striking scene — this remnant of the ancient sect, collected in their little 
synagogue, and seen by the light of two dim candles. They gave me 
every opportunity of observing their countenances, and in a good light ; 
for they were so struck with my trumpet that they crowded round me, 
with the candles, wherever I moved : and, if they were too much en- 
grossed with this novelty to attend sufficiently to our questions, they 
at least gave me every facility for noting their picturesque and earnest 
faces. There was something shocking, too, in their eagerness about an 
ear-trumpet, when we were full of their ancient history as Samaritans. 

It was now dark : and we were lighted through the archways, and 
down the hill on our way home, by a single candle, which burned 
steadily in the still air. I bathed in the spring which bubbled up out 
of the ground, among the gardens near our encampment : and after tea, 
we read aloud the 4th chapter of John, and the history of the Jewish 
and Samaritan controversy, that our memories might not be treacherous 
on the spot. While we were thus reading in our tent, the jackal was 
in full cry on the slopes of Gerizim. 

We went up the hill again, the next morning, to see the city lying 
in its valley, and admire the picturesque Nablous people sitting and 
walking in their cemetery ; and it was past seven before we mounted. 
Nothing can be more cheerful than the valley beyond Nablous. The 
fountains are innumerable. Every few minutes we were passing 
brimming cisterns, bubbling springs, and shining brooks ; and stream- 
lets came down from the hills to the right hand and the left. Of 
course, the valley is fertile, and to-day, the reapers were busy among 
the barley all along the valley ; and the waving crops on the uplands 



SEBASTE. 



451 



were nearly ready for the sickle. The hills, a continuation of Ebal 
and Gerizim, are more thickly peopled than in any district we had yet 
passed through — -the villages being in sight of one another, from height 
to height, all the way. We had passed a picturesque old aqueduct, 
which communicated with a modern mill ; and we knew that the next 
was to be our signal to turn up the hills to the right, to find Sebaste, 
the ancient Samaria. The baggage-train was to proceed along the di- 
rect road to Djeneen, our resting-place for the night. Our party, when 
we began crossing the hills, was thus a small one, and two were la- 
dies ; and the inhabitants of Sebaste have the reputation of being rude 
and rapacious towards all strangers but those who are imposing from 
their arms and their numbers. But we met with no direct incivility. 
From the eminence we ascended on coming to the second aqueduct, 
the finest possible view is obtained of the site of the ancient Samaria : 
and a finer site no city, ancient or modern, ever had. The surround- 
ing hills make a basin of about six miles in diameter. They are of 
considerable height, so that they might almost be called mountains ; 
but tliere are openings between them which cause a sufficient circula- 
tion of air to ventilate the interior of this rampart. Nearly in the midst 
of this basin rises an oblong, swelling hill — not so lofty as those which 
surround it, but high enough to be breezy and sunny. Old Samaria 
covered this hill, and stretched down round its skirts. The great Baal 
temple, and the palaces of his priests, and of Ahab and Jezebel, and 
the groves of Ashtaroth, then crowned this hill, and adorned its slopes ; 
and the well- watered valleys on every side were rich with gardens, 
and orchards and fertile fields, while the opposite uplands were clothed 
with flocks. Over the ridge of one of these hills, came the fierce Jehu 
from Jezreel, where he had seen Jezebel destroyed. He came to 
ascertain that all the descendants of Ahab had been put out of the way, 
according to his command ; and when he had furthermore slain all the 
princes of Judah, here it was that he ordered that great feast of Baal, 
when these valleys echoed with music, and the sacrifices were led with 
rejoicing up the central hill to the great temple. There, from within 
that temple, were heard the shrieks of the slaughtered priests and wor- 
shipers ; and thither, when none were left alive of all who had fol- 
lowed Baal, came Jehu himself, with his officers and attendants, to 
break the images of the god, and unroof the temple, and claim glory 
from the prophets of Jehovah for having thus vindicated his name. 
Such was the place at one time : and now, how changed and still it 
lies ! Where the dwellings of the city rose in tiers, up the hill sides, 
there are now terraces of waving barley, and lines of olive-trees. 
Where the priests trod the marble pavements of the Temple of the 
Sun, the night-hawk broods over her eggs among the stones. The 
yellow nettle grows, almost like a shrub, where garlands for the sacri- 
fice were gathered, and the white convolvulus and dog-rose run riot 
over the foundation-stones of the ancient palaces. 

But other powers have been here since the days of Ahab and Jehu, 
and the vengeful prophets of Israel. Herod rebuilt and fortified Sama- 
ria, and called it Sebaste, in honor of Augustus (Sebastus) Caesar. Jo- 



452 



EASTERN LIFE. 



sephus tells of the citadel of Sebaste, and of the noble palaces and 
colonnades of Herod's building : and there are remains enough to tell 
the story for themselves. Shafts of granite pillars stand in the field, 
and in long rows on the hill-side. Mutilated capitals are laid down 
among the village pavement : and broken shafts are built into the walls 
of the vineyards. Judging- by these remains, the architecture must 
have been of a mean order ; and I certainly felt disposed on the spot 
to overlook Herod and his Roman friends, and to go back in memory 
to the short-lived and turbulent kingdom of Israel, when the planetary 
faith of the East and the Monotheism of the Hebrews here carried on 
their most desperate conflict, and when it was high-day with the power 
of the prophets. It may be doubted whether any heathenism with 
which the world was ever afflicted was administered with so fierce a 
vindictiveness and cruelty as the Prophets of Jehovah cherished and 
boasted of in this place. Here, however — into this valley from whence 
Elisha sent his fatal message to Jehu — came One afterwards who sent 
a very diff'erent message abroad among men ; that they should become 
children of a Father who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, 
and sends his rain upon the just and the unjust. I could not but look 
upon the dewy wild flowers as having sprung up in his footsteps, 
where otherwise all would have been barren and dreary — laid utterly 
waste by the destructive passions of men. There is a comparatively 
modern monum^ent here, which looks strangely on such a spot; — a 
half-ruined Gothic cathedral upon the hill of Samaria ! It is believed 
to be the work of the Empress Helena, who, crediting whatever she 
was told, supposed she had found the dungeon in which the Baptist 
was beheaded. Part of the walls of this cathedral look like any hand- 
some modern church: and its position is very fine, when looked back 
upon from the valley, or from the opposite hill-side. 

We appeared a most flowery party as we rode away from Sebaste. 
Below the village, in a nook of moist ground, the large blue iris grew 
in profusion ; and our guide Giuseppe, our buffoon for the time, pre- 
sented us with handfuls of them. He was riding a very small ass, so 
largely (though not heavily) laden, that his legs stuck out horizontally 
over his baggage as he rode. He had stuck bunches of iris wherever 
he could insert them about his ass, carried a large bunch in each 
hand, and had feathered his hat all round with the nodding flowers ; 
so that he was as fantastic an avant-courier as could be seen. — The 
slopes were now all yellow with marigolds, and the ground covered 
with scabius, white convolvulus, yellow nettles, hollyhocks and wild 
artichokes. We had entered the plain of Sharon, in the midst of 
which stands Sannoor on its flowery hill. Here we were carried on 
to crusading times ; for here the crusaders built a stout fort, by which 
they commanded the neighboring region. 

A little further on, and about three hours from Djeneen, we overtook 
our baggage train : and for those three hours, we had a constant suc- 
cession of beautiful views. When we left the plain of Sharon, we 
entered a little grassy valley, where a round, weedy old well occurred 
here and there ; and camels were feeding, and we met Arabs with 



DJENEEN. 



453 



their donkeys, and women carrying loads of wood. Twice we caught 
glimpses, through breaks in the hills, of the plain of Esdraelon or 
Jezreel, which we were to cross to-morrow : and beautiful it looked, 
beyond the dark foreground of olive groves, — its rich levels stretching 
far away in the afternoon sunshine to the blue Galilean hills which 
bounded it to the north. By a steep and picturesque descent, we came 
down upon Djeneen, which lies on the boundary between the hill 
country and the plain of Jezreel. 

The town itself is on the lowest slope of the hills ; and a part of it 
is impregnably fortified by a hedge of prickly pear. I was not aware 
till this day how impossible it is to do anything with such a fence. I 
tried, as an experiment, to pass through a gap ; and when I had suc- 
ceeded in getting two steps back again, out of the clutches of the 
malicious plant, I was persuaded that no artificial chevaux defrise can 
surpass it. — We encamped on a piece of waste ground between the 
town and the cemetery, and were desired not to stray, nor to leave 
about any article of property whatever. It is a poor town, with only 
about eight hundred inhabitants, who have as bad a reputation as if 
they lived on the Jericho road. While the tents were putting up, I 
happened to be sitting beside a pile of saddles and pistols; and Alee 
asked me not to leave the spot without calling him to mount guard, as 
the Djeneen people pounce upon everything that is left un watched for 
a moment. I could not keep awake, after having been eight hours in 
the saddle, and made a pillow of the property beside me. 

When I awoke, I found that some visitors had been taking pipes and 
coffee in the gentlemen's tent: the Governor of Djeneen, and a majes- 
tic-looking homicide ; — a man of the name of Abderrahman, who arrived 
at home, one day of the preceding year, with a man's head hanging 
from his saddle. It was not too late now for me to see these gentry ; 
but I was not disposed. The Governor made a great show of interest 
about our being well guarded ; and promised to send four guards who 
might be entirely relied on. The horses and mules were collected and 
pegged down early, and all made as secure as the bad character of the 
neighborhood seemed to require. I walked out in the evening in the 
dark, when the muezzin was calling to prayer from the minaret of the 
town, and when all was still except when a prowling dog, or a curious 
townsman, stole through the grass or the tombs near, to walk round 
our camp. I kept within call of our people ; but yet I saw a good 
deal of the ways of the people about, dim as the sky was, and late 
the hour. I never made the effort to conquer my fatigue and go out, 
without being glad that I had done so. I always learned something, 
or saw something that I was glad to remember. If nothing else, there 
was always the camp ; and a few new faces, to add to my interior 
portrait gallery. 

In the morning, our best mule was gone. The four guards appeared 
quite as much surprised as anybody else, and could not account for its 
being released from its pegs before their eyes, and detached from the 
line, and carried off, without any one of the four perceiving the theft. 
Alee frankly told us his opinion. He believed that the Governor knew 



454 



EASTERN LIFE. 



very well where the mule was ; that he would come, and condole, and 
offer his services, and recommend that one of our muleteers should 
be left behind : — that in a day or two, the beast would be declared 
found upon the mountain, having simply strayed ; and that a sum of 
money would be asked for the trouble of finding it, — while it was, no 
doubt, all the while safe enough in a stable in the town. Such was 
Alee's view of the case, as an experienced man. 

Presently the Governor came, and looked very solemn over his cof- 
fee : and his advice was that a muleteer should be left behind — to meet 
us at Nazareth, after our excursion to Mount Carmel. This business 
delayed our departure, so that I had time to see something of this re- 
spectable Djeneen. The respectable homicide appropriately offered 
his services as escort to two of us who were disposed to walk ; and 
nothing could be more courteous than his behaviour. We were told 
that he had a very good case : that there was an old blood feud between 
his family and that of his victim, and that he had received excessive 
provocation. He was a fine-looking personage — not only tall and 
dignified, but with an open and gende expression of countenance. 
Under his guidance, we saw the outside of the Governor's house, the 
cafe to which the smokers and news-mongers repair ; — (this day, to 
talk over our mule, no doubt ;) — a poor, half-empty bazaar, and a 
mosque which had four marble Corinthian pillars before it. We returned 
through an orange grove, which was in full blossom. Hitherto, I had 
seen nothing like it. Abderrahman gave us noble bunches of the blos- 
soms, which we kept fresh for some days. 

A large, ruined building, like a fort, crowned an eminence near our 
camp : and from this I saw something which I should not have dreamed 
of looking for. I saw snow on a mountain peak to the north-east. 
This mountain was Djebel Sheikh, the last peak of the Antilibanus 
range, and that which closes in the valley of the Jordan to the north. 

We got to horse before ten o'clock — not yet out of Samaria, but 
rejoicing that our next rest was to be among the hills of Galilee. 



CHAPTER Vn. 

PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.— NAZARETH.— RIDE TO MOUNT CARIMEL.— 
CONVENT OF MOUNT CARMEL.— ACRE.— RETURN TO NAZARETH. 

The Plain of Esdraelon is as lovely in itself as it is interesting from 
its associations. It extends in great vaslness before the eye ; but there 
is no part, if I remember rightly, which is not visibly enclosed by hills. 
Immediately behind us, to the south, rose the hills of Samaria which 
we had just crossed. To the south-east, the plain extended back for 
a considerable distance behind Djeneen, there supporting the Gilboa 
range, where Saul and Jonathan laid down their lives together. That 
cluster of hills was the spot where the mighty had fallen, when David 
lamented in one strain the father and the son, his inveterate persecutor 



ESDRAELON. 



455 



and his most beloved friend. In the plain, near the northern end of this 
Gilboa range, was Jezreel, where Ahab built for his sun-worshiping 
queen, her famous palace,— from a window of which she asked Jehu 
the fatal question, — "Had Zimri peace who slew his master?" — and 
from which window she was thrown down, at the command of the sav- 
age conqueror. — Further along the eastern side of the plain, rises Little 
Mount Hermon, which we had on our right for some hours this morning : 
and on one of its northern spurs he the remains of the village of Nain. 
Here again, we might turn away from the bloody deeds and vindictive 
spirits of the earlier periods, to repose on the spiritual calm, and enjoy 
the benevolent acts of him who " came not to destroy men's lives, but 
to save them." How near together are the two scenes which so strongly 
exhibit the differing spirit of the two dispensations! Jehu, coming at 
the call of Elisha, was met by the son of the widowed Jezebel as he 
was approaching her palace ; and he shot the prince through the heart, 
and then advancing, instead of attempting to console the widowed and 
mourning mother, he commanded her murder, by a cruel and contemp- 
tuous death. This was the pupil of the Prophet Elisha. Very near 
to this spot, a widowed mother appears in the history of a later time, 
following the bier of her only son : and one arrived who restored her 
son to her, after having spoken words of cheer. Here was the spirit 
of the new dispensation ! — A little further on is Endor, where the rest- 
less and apprehensive Saul came to learn his fate and that of his house, 
by means of those arts of Divination which he had declared punish- 
able by death. — A little further on still, is Mount Tabor, traditionally 
the Mount of Transfiguration. — Far beyond these ranges, and towering 
over everything intermediate, rises that peak of Djebel Sheikh which 
I have mentioned, from whose base flow the first streams of the Jordan. 
Along the north end of the plain run the Galilean hills, in which Naza- 
reth lies embosomed : and where they retreat to the northwest, the 
expansion of the plain in that direction nearly reaches Carmel: and 
through it runs the Kishon, whose overflow swept away the forces of 
Sisera, and whose stream was defiled with the blood of four hundred 
and fifty of the prophets of Baal, slain at the command of Elijah. 

Then, approaching us from that north-west point, comes the range 
of Carmel, its ilex woods becoming distinguishable on its nearer slopes. 
These western hills, without intermitting, decline into the lower ranges 
as they reach the south-west of the plain, and there become mingled 
with the hills of Samaria. — Nowhere in the Holy Land did we see any 
district so various in its historical interests as this: and, indeed, there 
is no other so marked. To the eye of the historical and religious 
philosopher, the dead rise here, to give account of the life of the He- 
brew nation, from their first entrance upon the land to their expulsion 
from it. 

First comes the ghostly array of the tribes following Joshua. Some 
of them had had their portions assigned on the eastern side of Jordan, 
but had obeyed Joshua's command to defer their settlement there till 
the enemy should be everywhere subdued, and the tribes be secure of 



456 



EASTERN LIFE. 



their respective portions.* Here they came on from the Jordan; and 
were halted while this fertile and beautiful plain was apportioned to the 
tribe of Issachar ; — Issachar who, according, to the blessing in Deutero- 
nomy, was to "rejoice in his tents, "t and here had abundant reason to 
do so. 

Then, when Joshua and all that host whom he led had passed on 
through the Valley of the shadow of death, new generations were busy 
on their traces. A Kenite woman belonging to a neutral tribe, at peace 
with both the Canaanites and the Hebrews, was at her tent door here 
one day, listening as she w^atched her flock, for the far sounds of battle: 
for the great Canaanitish general had collected his iron chariots and 
ranged his troops ; and Barak, the Hebrew leader, rushed down the 
side of Mount Tabor, to meet Sisera in the plain.i The shock of war 
was fierce, and the swollen river carried off many of the Canaanites 
whom the battle had spared. As the Kenite woman, Jael, was aware 
that the strife was over, while the evening stillness was settling down 
upon the plain, a fugitive, weary, heated and thirsty, came by. She 
invited him in, probably in the sincere spirit of the ordinary Eastern 
hospitality, which makes the tent of the host the sanctuar}^ of the guest 
— she gave him milk, and laid him down to rest. And then, while he 
slept heavily, occurred the tempting thought, the devilish suggestion, of 
the favor she might secure from the conquering party, if she dehvered 
the commander of the foe dead into their hands : and here she murdered 
him. That black deed comes up to judgment in this fair scene, like a 
poisonous exhalation from the verdant ground. 

Next comes a figure, "taller than any others of the people by the 
shoulders and upwards," — a man mufiled and disguised, with two fol- 
lowers at his heels, stealing over the plain in the night, to the dwelling 
of the seeress of Endor.§ And through the darkness appeared the sheeted 
ghost, — the " old man with a mantle," whom Saul dared not look upon 
even while pouring out his complaints, and questioning Samuel of his 
doom. His restless spirit, — "sore distressed," as he declared, — was 
soothed by no deception or equivocal words: — "to-morrow shalt thou 
and thy sons be with me," w^as the warning of the spirit. — And 
next day, — no further off than these heights of Gilboa, — Saul " was 
sore wounded of the archers," and, when his armor-bearer would not 
dispatch him before the foe came up, he fell upon his own sword. 
Here, among these green slopes, " Saul died, and his three sons, and 
his armor-bearer, and all his men, that same day together." And his 
armor was hung up in the temple of Astarte, in the nearest town upon 
the plain. " How were the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war 
perished !"|| 

Long after, a stern prophet might be often seen going to and fro in 
various directions over this plain. "What manner of man was he?" 
asked King Ahaziah. " And they answered him, He was a hairy 
man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, 



* Joshua I. ]2— 15. 
X Judges IV. 14—22. 
II 2 Samuel L 27. 



t Deuteronomy XXIII. Iv^. 
§ Samuel XXYIII. 8—25. 



ESDRAELON. 



457 



It is Elijah the Tishbite."* Yes, — Ehjah often passed over this Es- 
draelon; — sometimes to Damascus; sometimes to Mount Carmel, and 
along the course of the Kisl^on : and once he came upon the news that 
the king and queen, Ahab and Jezebel, had enlarged the grounds of 
their new palace at Jezreel, here at hand, by taking possession of a 
vineyard which they had coveted, and procured at length by false 
accusation and murder. We cannot tell which of the fields now 
spreading about the village once called Jezreel was Naboth's vineyard; 
but in surveying the scene, the eye cannot miss it, though it cannot 
identify it. 

Here, soon after, came another general, driving in his chariot over 
the plain. He was a great man, fortunate in every thing but health: 
but what was all his prosperity to him while he was a leper ? How 
earnest was his desire for relief is shown by his taking the word of 
" a little maid" of his wife's, a Hebrew girl, and coming all the way 
from Damascus to Samaria, in hope of cure. And when he had found 
his cure in Jordan, and had returned to Samaria to give thanks to 
Ehsha,he was passing home to Damascus again, over this plain, when 
Gehazi overtook him, and obtained a gift by fraud. It might have 
been somewhere within sight that the Syrian general " hghted down 
out of his chariot" to meet the prophet's servant. 

If Gehazi did here a mean and fraudulent act, his master soon com- 
mitted a deed of recklessness and vindictive cruelty for which no re- 
probation can be too strong. He sent by this way a young prophet, 
in search of Jehu, with a message, as from Jehovah, the object of which 
was to avenge the wrongs of the prophets on the posterity of Ahab, 
the patron of the priests of Baal. Hither came the young prophet, 
with his loins girded, and the box of oil in his hand,t with which he 
was to anoint Jehu for his savage office. And hither soon came Jehu, 
breathing vengeance and slaughter, and murdered the young king who 
came out to meet him; and then the royal mother, at her own palace; 
and then above a hundred of the royal race; and finally, the whole 
multitude of the priests and worshipers of Baal. They are like an 
army of ghostly victims, haunting the plain. 

Here, in a later time, did the Egyptians destroy one whose life was 
of inestimable importance, and whose death remains a mystery. The 
Egyptian monarch Necho had no enmity against Josiah ; and he told 
him so. Necho was coming up against Damascus, and had no desire 
to make enemies along his road : but Josiah, for some unknown reason, 
attacked, him on his way ; — possibly from fear of the Egyptian power, 
if it should be established to the north-east, as well as the south-west 
of his dominions. Here he came out against the Egyptians upon this 
plain, — after witnessing the completion of the great work of elaborat- 
ing and propounding the Law; and re-establishing the Passover: and 
here " the archers shot at king Josiah; and the king said to his ser- 
vants, Have me away; for I am sore wounded.":: And they took him 
to Jerusalem, where he died. 



• 2 Kings, I. 8. 



t 2 Kings, IX. 1. 



X 2 Chron. XXXV. 23. 



458 



EASTERN LIFE. 



And at last, after the march of more armies on errands of destruc- 
tion, how sweet is the calm which settles down upon this wide field of 
history when the Messengers of Peace come hither, charged with words 
of wisdom and offices of mercy ! When Jesus was on his way home- 
wards from Jerusalem, " he must needs pass through Samaria," and, 
of course, over this plain. And we know that when he journeyed 
southwards from the lake, accompanied by those who had left their 
nets to follow him, he took his way by Nain. How one sees them, in 
the fresh morning, coming onwards over the green tracks, and delayed 
till the heat of noon by those who issued forth from the villages to 
accost and petition the Teacher ! What a multitude on the slopes of 
Tabor! and further on, we think of the disciples of John coming to 
know who, in truth, he was, and whether they were yet to look for 
another. — One man afterwards traveled this road to Damascus, full of 
hatred and murderous thoughts ao:ainst these children of the kinofdom 
of peace ; but he was soon disabused ; and Paul returned an altered 
man, — ready to pour out his own blood, but no more to shed that of 
others. When the traveler contemplates this succession of events on 
their march through this scene, from the restless spirits of the dark 
early times to the blessed ministers of a later age, he sees " the day- 
spring from on high" touching those Galilean hills, and brightening 
the plain, and trusts that, dark as are the clouds that yet overshadow 
that light, it shall " increase more and more unto the perfect day." 

We were glad to find the scene so still and quiet now. The villages 
were few, and all retired from our track. That track was green, and 
perfectly level. The wild fiowers were profuse along the way : wild 
artichokes made a sort of fence on either hand ; and beyond them was 
long grass, where the tall cranes were wading; or tilled fields, over 
which the quail was flitting, and from which young partridges ran out 
under my horse's feet. Butterflies and dragon-flies glittered in the sun, 
and small birds fluttered about us as if they had no fear of us. We saw 
the outline of the village of Nain, standing up against the clear sky, on 
the promontory of Little Hermon, to our right hand. Mount Tabor 
rose conspicuous from the plain ; and we then believed that we should 
look abroad from its summit, before many days were over ; a hope 
which was not fulfilled. A little beyond the middle of the plain, a 
broad road crossed our track : and here, while waiting for directions 
from behind which way to take, I saw a travehng party, — with mer- 
chants and merchandize, — going north-eastwards along the broad road ; 
— to Damascus, as I afterwards learned. This is the regular camel- 
road from the coast to Damascus. 

We were now in Galilee ; and it was not long before we began to 
ascend the hills which had looked so tempting from Djeneen. They 
were very pretty now, when we were climbing up, and winding round 
their stony passes. Their recesses were wooded, and goats were brows- 
ing on their sides. One pass was very steep: then we came upon a 
well: then we turned round the base of two or three eminences, rising 
from this high table-land ; and then suddenly found ourselves looking 
down upon pretty Nazareth. Its modern name is Nasirah. 



NAZARETH. 



459 



No place in Palestine satisfied me more entirely than Nazareth. Much 
as one's associations require, it is all there; and one's first and constant 
emotion here is of thankfulness that Jesus was reared amidst such 
natural beauty. Fifteen hills congregate to form the basin in which 
Nazareth hes ; — a basin of fertihty, high up among the hills, — not deep 
enough for extreme heat, at a breezy elevation, — and abundantly 
watered by springs in the rock, and streams from the surrounding 
heights. The town lies at one end of this oblong depression ; and 
some of its buildings stretch a little way up a slope. Before the town, 
lies a httle green piain, where we longed to pitch our tents; but the 
servants apprehended rain, and we were conducted to the Latin Con- 
vent. The guest-chambers there had been taken possession of by the 
officers of the Harlequin, — the gentlemen we had met at the Consul's 
at Jerusalem: but they insisted on giving them up to us. Our quar- 
ters were so comfortable that we had no drawback but the shame of 
turning out our predecessors, who had had worse than no rest the night 
before, after the strong exercise of riding over the hills in the way pe- 
culiar to British sailors. I could scarcely keep my saddle, the next day, 
for laughing at the sight of the middies, spurring and tugging, — stoop- 
ing to the very mane, and letting their flaps fly like a pair of wings. 
The steeper the hill-side, the faster they must go; and the wilder and 
more desperate they were, the more wretched looked their confounded 
dragoman. They gave him no rest of body or mind. When I heard 
lately that one of the party had boasted in his letters home that he had 
killed off' three horses in that trip, I wondered whether they had al- 
lowed themselves an equal proportion of dragomen. Their method of 
riding, however, whatever we may otherwise think of it, certainly en- 
hanced their merit in giving up their apartments to us, when they must 
have so much needed rest. 

The Latin Convent is the largest building in Nazareth ; but it is not 
disagreeably conspicuous, — the other abodes being, however poorly in- 
habited, substantially built. We went immediately to the Church of 
the Convent, — the Church of the Annunciation. 

I cannot say what is the reason ; but it certainly appears that a visit 
to this church is something very different from attendance on other con- 
vent worship in Palestine. One traveler after another, — the man of the 
world, the Protestant divine, the glib narrator, and the scientific histo- 
rian, — have testified without concert to the emotions excited by the 
worship of this church. No doubt, the locality is supremely interest- 
ing; but that would rather indispose me, for one, for a favorable im- 
pression from any of the artificial features of the place. The church 
is small and plain, compared with many others, though with handsome 
hangings, and certainly quite enough of show. The- earnestness of the 
monks, and the beauty of the music have much to do with the impres- 
sion, no doubt. The chanting is very fine. It was certainly the best 
music we heard while abroad. The spectacle was strange when the 
choristers came down, and kneeled on the pavement beside me, and 
uncovered their heads at the elevation of the Host ; — the marked Arab 



460 



EASTERN LIFE. 



face, and the head shaven, except the top-knot left for the angel of the 
resurrection ! 

The floor rises towards the grand altar, to accommodate the grottoes 
below. These grottoes formed, the monks say, the lower part of the 
house of Joseph and Mary. The upper part, they declare, took flight 
to avoid desecration from the Mohammedans, and soared through the 
air to Loretto, resting for a time in Illyria by the way. We were 
obliged to visit the part which remains, which we did by descending 
the steps within the church. The nest of little caverns in the subter- 
ranean rock are devoutly shown as Mary's kitchen, sitting-room and 
chamber. Thus far, one may smile at the childish superstition which 
makes warm-hearted, ignorant persons gratify their imagination and 
aifections by consecrating localities such as these. But something fol- 
lows which one cannot regard so cheerfully. We were led to the spot 
of the Annunciation, and shown the granite pillars which stand where 
the angel Gabriel and Mary stood when she received the promise. To 
persons well read in history, who are aware of the frequent recurrence 
of this mythic story, in connection with the birth of conspicuous men, 
there is nothing surprising in meeting with it here; and those whose 
reading has not gone beyond their Bible, cannot but be struck by the 
identity of the history of the birth of Ishmael, Isaac, Samuel, and espe- 
cially Samson, with that of Jesus, as far as the annunciation of each to 
the mother by an angel is concerned. But I had seen more. In 
ancient Egyptian temples, w^e had encountered the same story that 
awaited us here. In Egypt, it was harmless and interesting to see 
sculptured before our eyes, and explained by written legends, the ap- 
pearance of Thoth, the heavenly messenger, to Tmanhemva, Q,ueen of 
Thothmes IV., to announce to her from the Supreme — from Amun 
Generator himself — that she should bear a son.* In Egypt, it was 
harmless and interesting to trace the incarnations, which, understood as 
we understand them now, give us at once the truths made known in 
the ^Mysteries, and the form of allegory in which the priests presented 
the concealed doctrine to the people. We do not revolt from the white 
star on the forehead of Apis (the spot which marked the entrance of 
the divine ray), nor from any other tokens of those incarnations which 
abound in the old Eastern mythologies. They convey truths in their 
way; and the way was appropriate to the people and the time. But 
when, in a much later age, the monotheistic Jews put aside the charac- 
teristics of their faith, received the infection of allegorizing from their 
heathen neighbors, and attached their allegories to the simple history 
of their prophets, the process assumes a new character, and is likely to 
be used to a most disastrous purpose. Philo allegorized about Jewish 
personages and events, and Jewish scholars understood him. Origen 
allegorized so as to do us no harm at this day ; as his method was 
avowed, and is sufficiently understood by Christian scholars. But it 
has been a great misfortune to the average Christian world for many 
ages, that the old allegories of Egypt — the old images of miraculous 

* Champollion, Lettres sur TEgypte. Palace of Ameuuphis 3Ieiiiaon at El Uksur. 



CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION. 



461 



birth, and the annunciation of it from heaven, should have been laid 
hold of, and repeated from age to age, however the character of the 
theology might change, till at last, repeated without explanation, it 
came to be taken, with other mythic stories, for historical truth, and is 
to this day profanely and literally held by multitudes who should have 
been trained to a truer reverence; and jested upon by multitudes more 
who cannot be wondered at for looking no further into Christianity, 
when they find this old Egyptian and Hindoo allegory presented as a 
historical fact at the very outset. Having stood before the sculpture of 
the Annunciation at Thebes, and standing now between the pillars of 
the Annunciation at Nazareth, I could not but feel how much less irre- 
verence attached to the Egyptian doctrines, in their early age: and I 
think no one can doubt what indignation would be expressed against 
the blasphemous indecency of Egyptian superstition, if we knew that 
they had presented to the people, as literal truth, such a story about the 
birth of the most distinguished of Egyptian men as our poor and igno- 
rant fellow-men are told in our Christian churches, through the mistake 
of an ancient allegory for modern history. To the earnest and thought- 
ful observer, it appears no wonder that Christianity has done so little to 
raise and purify the nations in eighteen centuries, while even now so 
much of mythological fable is permitted to encrust it, and while so 
many tenets which would be called immoralities in any other connec- 
tion — tenets which have found their way into Christianity as corrup- 
tions, through the self-will and vain imaginations of former men — are 
now preserved as essential doctrines by the ignorance and timid super- 
stition of later generations. Till the rehgion taught by Jesus is purged 
of its Egyptian, Greek, Assyrian and Pharisaic accretions and adultera- 
tions, there can be httle hope that its effects will answer to its promises, 
and the mystery of its failure in regenerating the world will remain 
what it now is. 

In the church is hung, near the altar, what the monks call the por- 
trait of Christ, — copied from an original likeness ! They actually be- 
lieve in this portrait-painting among the Jews at the time of Jesus ! 
However uncomfortable it makes one, one cannot help looking at this 
picture, when it is before one's eyes: and it is best to look; for there 
can be no association of one's idea of him with it after that. It is meant 
to represent the ordinary conception of his face ; and it is not so bad as 
to be indecent : but the face is wooden, and the eyes are not quite straight. 
The belief of these ignorant monks is evidently sincere; as it would be 
if a printing-press or a mail-coach were given to them, as being relics 
of the same date. 

They took us to Joseph's workshop, where, as they say, Jesus as- 
sisted his father. It is now a small chapel, with a paltry altar. Next, 
we were shown the house where, as the monks said, "Jesus gave a 
supper to his friends, before and after his resurrection." A rock starts 
up out of the floor of this apartment, slanting, but so nearly round as 
to resemble a table ; and hence, no doubt, the origin of the tradition. 
This "Mensa Christi" appears to be valued above every other memo- 



462 



EASTERN LIFE. 



rial at Nazareth. The papal sanction* gave it this value in the eyes of 
the Latin Christians: the Greeks esteem it no less: and the Arabs and 
Turks come and prostrate themselves, — apparently because other peo- 
ple do, — with as much zeal as if they also were to gain seven years' 
indulgence bj^ their pilgrimage. 

The next building we came to interested me more than any place 
exhibited by the monks, in all Palestine. It was the only place in the 
form of a building or habitation which it appeared reasonable or possi- 
ble to believe in. It professes to be the synagogue where Christ first 
taught in his native place, — of which the beautiful narrative is given 
in Luke IV. No scene in his ministry had ever fixed itself more dis- 
tinctly in my youthful imagination than this; — his reading from the 
scroll, — his delivering it to the attendant of the synagogue, and sitting 
down to expound what he had read, and open the promises of his mis- 
sion; — the curiosity first, and then the astonishment, and then the 
haughty wrath of his hearers, who were eager to learn what the car- 
penter's son had to say, but could no more endure the statement of his 
claims than the people of Jerusalem, — so famous for stoning the pro- 
phets. Now, it appears that a place of public worship is less likeJy to 
be forgotten as the scene of a remarkable event, than any private dwell- 
ing : and the riot which ensued on this occasion was likely to fix the 
circumstances in the memory of the resident Jews, for the three centu- 
ries which elapsed before the place was appropriated by tradition. 
From that time, it has always been beHeved in, and held successively 
by the Latins, devout Arabs, the Greeks, and now the Latins again. 
Of course, no one supposes the very stones of which it is buih to be 
eighteen centuries old ; but only that this is the spot on which there 
has always since been a building. It is now a small and very plain 
chapel; — a mere old vaulted room, dim and antique-looking. I own 
that my heart did, for once, beat with the true pilgrim emotion while 
tinder the guidance of a monk. This was to me, the true spot of the 
Annunciation, — of the annunciation of " the acceptable year of the 
Lord." Here he sat where probably others of the Therapeutse had 
sat, calling to him the broken-hearted and the captives, and the weary 
and heavy-laden: and when his critical townsmen were saying in their 
hearts "Physician, heal thyself," he announced to them such mighty 
things that w^ere to be done above those which other teachers had of- 
fered, that they rose in wrath, and would fain have ended his life and 
doctrine together. As I have observed before, the aim of the Essene 
sect, — the physicians of bodies and souls, — was to bring out and re- 
store the Moral Import of the Law ; — to revive the life of the Mosaic 
system. That this was also the aim of Jesus, no one can read the gos- 

* The following papal certificate, in printed form, is hung up on the wall of this 
apartment: — " Tradictio continua est, et nunquam interriipta, apud omnes nationes 
Orientales, hanc petrain, dictam Mensa Christi, iilam ipsam esse supra quam Domi- 
nus noster Jesus Christus cum suis comedit discipulis, ante et post suam resurrec- 
tionem a mortuis. Et Sancta Romana Ecclesia Indulgentiara concessit septem an- 
norum et totidem quadragenarum, omnibus Christi fidelibus hunc sanctum locum 
visitandibus,.recitando saltern ibi unum Pater et Ave, dummodo sit in statu gratice/' 



NAZARETH. 



463 



pels without perceiving: but this was a preparatory work; — an all-im- 
portant one in its season, and which required all the joint efforts of the 
missionaries whom he sent through the land: but it was still only pre- 
paratory, and to last while the Law and the authority of the Prophets 
lasted: and then was to come that new order of things which was called 
his kingdom. From that very day of his appearance, the blind guides 
of the people were to be shamed: the traditional fabrications and legal 
pedantries of the Pharisees were to be set aside for a worship which 
should be in spirit and in truth. The Mosaic system had become a 
sort of Dead Sea, overhung with heavy vapors, delusive to the eye, 
and pernicious to the hfe: and a wholesome breeze was now to sweep 
over it, and make all vital and translucent. But the law itself was not 
yet to be touched : — not " one jot nor one tittle" was to pass away till 
the new kingdom was prepared. This kingdom was what he that 
day preached in the little synagogue at Nazareth. Others might have 
sat in the same seat who taught that which was truth and life in com- 
parison with the teachings of the Pharisees : but here was One, — a 
townsman, whose countenance was familiar to all who heard him, — 
who proclaimed "the acceptable year of the Lord," and announced the 
glad tidings of a kingdom to come. 

There are several places on "the brow of the hill whereon the city 
was built," whence they might have intended to cast him down. The 
monks show an impossible place, two miles off. It was enough for us 
to station ourselves on the heights, and look about with clearer eyes 
than the monks could have helped us to. 

I am not aware that we have any record of any appearance of Christ 
in the country west of Nazareth, — unless Dr. Robinson be right in dif- 
fering from other authorities as to the position of Cana of Galilee.* As 
we rode, next day, however, from Nazareth to Mount Carmel, I could 
not but regard all we saw as having been familiar to his eyes ; and I 
was all day in a mood of rejoicing, for his sake, that this nook of the 
world was so full of loveliness. I cannot agree with those who regard 
the Hfe of Jesus as the mournful scene which it is commonly conceived 
to be. It is natural enough for us to look upon it as mournful. The 
tenderness of our gratitude and love makes us dwell on the sad features 
of his lot; — on the lowness of mind of his followers, — on the absence 
of sympathy in his family, — on the maHce of his enemies, — on the 
apparent failure of his mission, — and on his humiliating and early 
death. But did these things make up his life? Have we no truer 
and higher sympathy with him than to be always looking for the thorns 
that strewed his path, without remembering the glorious world that 
spread around him, and the clear heavens over his head ? Had he not 
all the gifts of the soul, — a higher wealth than that of the whole world ? 
Had he not the pleasures of moral sympathy? If he was tortured, 
even into expressions of vehement wrath, by the evil tempers of the 
Pharisees, had he not intense enjoyments from the same source of sen- 
sibility ? Did not the widow at the treasury, and the centurion, and 



* Biblical Researches, III. 204. 



464 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the Syro-Phenician woman, and the family at Bethany, and the penitent 
woman, and the beloved disciple, all administer intense satisfaction to 
him? Is it not true that the still under-current of human affairs and 
human character is the purest and sweetest; and that it is the turbulent 
and corrupt part of human life which comes to the surface, and engages 
the eyes and ears of men ? And did not Jesus know what was in man 
and in his life ? Was not all that was pure and sweet and noble known 
and felt to its very depths by him, in proportion as he was himself tran- 
scendantly pure and sweet and noble? Is there no joy in aspiration? 
Was his soul sad when he said " the world hath not known thee ; but 
I have known thee?" Are there no special satisfactions to the sons of 
God, — to the aposile, — to the redeemer of men ? Is there no substantial 
happiness in steadfast devotedness ? — no blissful thrill in self-sacrifice ? 
— no sense of filial repose in such a martyrdom as his ? To me it 
rather appears that if we were wise enough to enter into his experience 
as we ought, we should see that never before were a few months of life 
so crowded with joys as were those of the Ministry of Jesus. Think 
of the crowds who came to him with their several griefs, none of whom 
he sent away sorrowing : — think of the multitude of the docile, and 
hopeful, and faithful with whom he had communion : — think of his re- 
fuge in his solitude of spirit, and of his heavenly seasons of contempla- 
tion and prayer: — think of what the mere face of nature must have 
been to one who looked upon it with a sense quickened and deepened 
like his : — think, in short, what a heaven he carried within and about 
him, and say whether we are not irreverent and undutiful and hard if 
we refuse to rejoice with him, as far as in us hes. 

I think no one can refuse some such sympathy who follows his foot- 
steps in his own Galilee. If the singers of Israel, — psalmists and 
prophets, — exalted Lebanon for its majesty, — its summits, its cataracts, 
its black cedars and its snows, they praised Carmel for its beauty and 
richness. These mountains stand throughout the Hebrew poetry, as 
the symbols of power and grace. — Lebanon has lost some of its stern 
cedar groves ; but no changes of time can materially alter its character. 
Carmel has lost far more. Its fertility is much lessened, and the rich 
woods which once clothed the slopes are now thinned, where they have 
not disappeared. But nothing can impair the beauty of the position 
of Carmel, with the clear blue sea washing up to its base, — the shore 
and the green plain of Zabulon stretching away on another side, and a 
billowy expanse of wooded hills retiring inland, closed in by the lustrous 
roof of an Eastern sky. 

The wooding of these Galilean hills was a surprise to us to-day. For 
about two hours after leaving Nazareth, the hills were stony, and scan- 
tily clothed, as where they rise from the plain of Esdraelon : but after 
that, for about another hour, the scenery became so like that of the out- 
skirts of an English park, as to give us the same home-feeling that we 
had in meeting familiar weeds on our entrance into the Holy Land. 
After crossing a stretch of the plain, which here runs in among the 
hills, and passing a round well, and clear, fern-grown spring, near the 
poor village which represents the once great city and university of Sep- 



MOUNT CARMEL. 



465 



phoris, and then crossing more barley-fields, dropped over with clumps 
of fig and olive, and pomegranate coming into blossom, we entered upon 
the range of hills which we thought so English in their character. 
Rich grasses covered the slopes and feathered the glades, where the 
gleams and shadows and spring breezes were at their merry play. 
Clumps of ilex wooded every part, — casting shade into the levels, and 
overhanging the broken gravel-banks of the foreground. On we went, 
under spreading old trees, up hollow ways, along sunny glades, across 
grassy levels, till it was scarcely possible to believe where we were, 
and who had once been here. Then we descended upon the plain of 
Zabulon, which is intersected by the Kishon, and enclosed by these 
hills, the Carmel range, and the sea. Here we came into full view of 
the Mediterranean, dashing its white foam upon the sands. The little 
town of Hayfa,* marked by the Consular flags on the roofs, lay at the 
foot of Carmel ; and on its heights, we saw the Convent, to which we 
were bound. This is the most wooded side of Carmel, and it was 
clumped extensively with ilex. We rode briskly along the grassy road 
at its base, and crossed the Kishon where it gathered and spread among 
rocks, and flocks of cattle and goats were crowded in and about the 
pool. It must have been near this spot that the great contest took place 
between the priests of Baal and Elijah,! that the people might no longer 
" halt between two opinions,'' but choose which god they would follow. 
Here, at the base of Carmel, were, on the one hand, the four hundred 
and fifty priests of the Sun, with their garlands, altars, sacrifices ; — 
their jewels, their music, and their favoring multitude : and on the 
other hand, was the " hairy man girded with a leathern belt," Elijah 
the Tishbite, with his servant, his altar of stones, and his faith in Jeho- 
vah. Here, amidst all the appareil of the splendid Sun God, who had 
the king and queen for worshipers, did Elijah mock,:}: — as man should 
never mock at any object of faith; and here did he so bring round the 
multitude as that they lent themselves to his work of vengeance, and 
dragged down the whole body of the priests of the Sun to this river 
side, and slew them there. How different must the scene have been 
in that day from anything that we saw! The king Ahab and his 
household minister Obadiah, men of the opposite faiths, were abroad, 
— gone in different directions with attendants, to seek out the springs 
and fountains, and see if they could find grass enough to keep their 
beasts alive. § This plain was then brown and dusty with drought, 
where we were now riding over the turf and among wild-flowers, and 
passing cattle knee-deep in the cool waters. Where the fires of sacri- 
fice were then blazing, and the plain was reeking in the heat under the 
coppery sky, and human blood was curdling in the hollows of the 
ground, we were pacing under the shade of woods, seeing the barley 
wave in the breeze, and crossing the clear rivulets that stole down from 
the heights. When we were on the summit, I was yet more impressed 
with the contrast between the former day and this ; and especially when 

* Sometimes called Caiffa ; — anciently Hefa. 

f 1 Kings XVIIL X 1 Kings XVIII. 27. § 1 Kings XVIII. 5, 6. 

30 



m 



EASTERN LIFE. 



I took my last look abroad before retiring to rest. As every one knows, 
the summit of Carmei commands a magnificent expanse of sea ; and 
below that ridge it was that Elijah sat, with his head bowed on his 
knees, while his servant watched for signs of rain.* That servant 
looked abroad long and patiently over the salt sea and desolated land : 
and at last he saw only " a little cloud arising out of the sea, no bigger 
than a man's hand:" and when he had come down, " the whole hea- 
ven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain." I 
looked abroad over the same scene this night. The whole mountain 
side, dressed with blossoms and flowering shrubs, and fragrant herbs, 
was receiving the dews of the night. The plain, ready for harvest, lay 
dim below ; — the undulating line of the surf just show^ed where the 
land and the waters met ; and over the very horizon line of the heav- 
ing sea, — just where that little cloud might have come up, — the slender 
crescent of the young moon was dropping into the waves. Such is my 
vision of "the excellency of Carmei." 

It was not nearly sunset, however, when we arrived at the convent. 
The approach is through Hayfa, and by a rocky, grassy, wooded reach, 
to the foot of the ascent. The road up the mountain is very steep ; but 
it is fenced all the way ; and the traveler almost forgets his fatigues in 
the glory of the views. Acre, on the northern horn of the bay of which 
Carmei is the southern, is very conspicuous, — lying white on its pro- 
montory. 

The convent is spacious and handsome ; and a second house is build- 
ing for the reception of Mohammedan visitors. There are now twelve 
monks in it; men of a far superior order, w^e thought, to most that we 
had met. Brother Charles, who was our chief friend among them, was 
a traveled man, and spoke French like his mother tongue. The convent 
was laid waste by the Turks, at the time when they came up and murder- 
ed two thousand wounded French soldiers, who were brought hither to 
be nursed : and in order to rebuild it, it was necessary to obtain 30,000/. 
Brother Charles traveled over Europe to raise the money; and he seems 
to have called forth good will wherever he went. He shows an album 
which is as rich in the eminent names of Europe as his money bag 
was with its gold : and his open heart and manners indicate that he 
has lived in kindness, given and taken. Such seems to be the spirit 
of the estabhshment, where all strangers are welcome, — where the 
hungry are fed, the sick are nursed, and no question is made of matters 
of faith and opinion. I wish this example of the Christian spirit had 
been as operative on all who have benefited by it as one might have 
hoped it would be : but there is at least one person in the world whose 
heart cannot be softened by the hospitable spirit of this place. If the 
Pharisees were right in their doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 
one of them has got into this man, — a minister of the Free Church of 
Scotland, who delivers his paltry soul by pouring himself out in the 
Visitors' Book of the convent. The brethren made him as comfortable 
as they could, and supplied him with the little dainties of distillery and 



1 Kings XVIII. 42—45. 



CONVENT OF MOUNT CARMEL. 



467 



cookery, and from the garden and mountain side, which they prepare 
with their own hands, for the indulgence of their visitors. The holy 
man states this in the inscription he has left: says that here are all the 
luxuries of the body; but asks where, in this convent, are we to look 
for the salvation of the soul ? He ends by declaring himself constrained 
to cry out, "Where now is the Lord God of Elijah?" The grateful 
visitors who have succeeded this person have not spared him. Between 
those who are shocked at his ingratitude and pride, and those who are 
amused at his self-complacency and bad taste, he is now pretty well 
punished in the Visitors' Book at Mount Carmel ; so I will spare him 
the telling of his name. 

The church of the convent is handsome ; and it contains a picture 
worth noting — the portrait of St. Theresa, whom I agree with Bossuet 
in thinking one of the most interesting of the saints of his church. 
The bringing together of remote thoughts in travel is as remarkable to 
the individual as the bringing together of remote personages in the ac- 
tion of human life. How I used to dwell on the image of St. Theresa 
in my childhood, and long, in an ignorant sympathy with her, to be a 
nun ! And then, as I grew wiser, I became ashamed of her desire for 
martyrdom, as I should have been of any folly in a sister, and kept my 
fondness for her to myself. But all the while, that was the Theresa of 
Spain — now wandering among the Moors in search of martyrdom, and 
now shutting herself up in her hermitage in her father's garden at 
Avila. It had never occurred to me that I should come upon her traces 
at Mount Carmel. But here she was, worshiped as the reformatrix of 
her order. It was she who made the Carmelites bare-footed — i. e., 
sandaled instead of shod. It was she who dismissed all the indulg- 
ences which had crept in among her order ; and she obtained by her 
earnestness such power over the baser parts of human nature in those 
she had to deal with, as to reform the Carmelite order altogether, and 
witness before her death, the foundation of thirty convents, wherein 
her rule was to be practised in all its severity. Martyrdom by the 
Moors was not good enough for her ; it would have been the mere gra- 
tification of a selfish craving for spiritual safety. She did much more 
for God and man by living to the age of sixty-seven, and bringing back 
the true spirit into the corrupted body of her order. Here she is — the 
woman of genius and determination — looking at us from out of her stiff 
head-gear — as true a queen on this mountain throne as any empress 
who ever wore a crown. 

We saw the cave where Elijah is said to have hidden himself ; and 
were shown the " Pharmacie" of the monks — who distill excellent 
cordials — and their gardens — on three terraces. But our walk down 
the mountain side was our best entertainment. We thrust our way 
among flowering shrubs, tall hollyhocks, ilex and herbs of many sa- 
vors, down and down, by a zigzag path, to the School of the Prophets. 
It may be remembered that Obadiah,* the household minister of Ahab, 
hid a hundred of the prophets of the Lord in two caves. This is 



* 1 Kings XVIII. 4. 



468 



EASTERN LIFE. 



shown as one of these caves; some, however, caUing it the place of 
Ehjah's akar. It is a very fine grotto, in the finest position that fugi- 
tives could desire — hardly within hearing of the waves washing the 
base of the mountain, but overlooking a wide expanse of sea and shore. 
The grotto is evidently artificial, at least in its finish ; and Pococke sup- 
poses it to be entirely cut out of the rock. It is about 15 feet high, 
40 long, and 20 wide. Some simple tombs of those who have died 
here are at hand ; and among them is that of an infant of the British 
Consul at Jerusalem, whose lady was tenderly nursed here by the kind- 
hearted monks. 

Our hosts apologized for our dinner to-day. It was Friday; and 
they gave us fish, soup-maigre and eggs, and promised meat to-morrow. 
But these good things, wnth liqueurs, " tonics" and cofTee, gave us a 
very gentle idea of fasting. We had to amuse us within doors, an an- 
cient map of Jerusalem, which may be said to be as much like that 
city as any other; and some European newspapers, sent up to us from 
the Harlequin, which was riding in the bay below, and whose officers 
had scampered after us during our morning ride — rattled up to the con- 
vent — taken breath, and galloped down again — ^jumped into the Har- 
lequin's boat — sent her back again with these newspapers, and had 
them pitched up the mountain, in no time. I doubt whether " Arab 
intensity" itself transcends that of British naval officers, on a scamper 
ashore. We hoped that their dragoman was reclining at ease some- 
where, to recover his breath and spirits. 

The next day, April 17th, we had a charminof ride to Acre and back. 
Not being troubled with baggage mules, we could ride as we pleased ; 
and delightful it w^as to canter along the Bay of Acre, over the firm 
sand. There were three wrecks ashore, telling of recent storms where 
all was now so bright and glorious. We had to cross the Kishon, 
where it flows into the sea; and it was deep enough to require some 
care. We escaped a wetting by sending in a man, who had already 
waded through, and who showed us the best fording place. We cross- 
ed another stream — the Belus. A great quantity of sponge is thrown 
up on this coast. 

Acre is a wretched-looking place at present. The natural features 
about it are beautiful — its sea, and the rocks under water, a perfect 
feast to the eye ; but the town itself is a sad image of ruin. The ba- 
zaars are poor ; the people dull; and the mighty fortifications battered 
to pieces. The outer walls were in course of repair ; and among the 
workmen, we observed some convicts in chains. The distance of Acre 
from our convent we reckoned to be from fourteen to sixteen miles. 
When we returned, w^e w^ere duly hungry; but were entreated to wait 
an hour for dinner, as more guests had arrived. We languished in 
hunger till half past six, when we were summoned to table in the sa- 
loon. There was no dinner on the table ; nor did it come for a quarter 
of an hour — during which time we had sufficient amusement in con- 
templating our position. Here were the Russian Countess, whom we 
had left prostrated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, 
her attendant lady, physician, and secretary. Beside these fiercely 



RETURN TO NAZARETH. 



469 



moustached gentlemen, sat two smooth shaven, neat Americans. Here 
was a party, collected from the ends of the earth, and set down on the 
top of Mount Carmel, to be waited on by monks ! Such a party made 
the good monks very busy. It was uncomfortable to think of the se- 
verity of their rule, when I saw the dinner they set before us — first, 
soup and fish; then boiled fowls; then roast fowls ; then broiled fowls ; 
and finally, a huge bowl of rich custard. 

The next morning our convent friends and we parted in hearty friend- 
ship ; and we paced unwillingly down the mountain, and turned away 
from the sea. Our ride back to Nazareth made as sweet a Sunday 
morning of this as we could have anywhere enjoyed. All was fresh 
and quiet in the plain, and by the Kishon, — whose windings we now 
followed, and in the glades of what we called the park scenery of Gali- 
lee. — We obtained a finer view than before of Nazareth from the brow 
of the hill; and on dismounting, went again into the church, to enjoy 
the fine chanting. 

Our mule and its driver awaited us, as we had been led to expect. 
Just as Alee had foretold, the creature was declared by the Governor 
of Djeneen to have been found upon the mountain ; and fourteen pias- 
tres were charged for the trouble of its recovery. Like thieves in 
general, the people of Djeneen are very impolitic. The place has 
such a bad reputation that they find themselves generally avoided by 
travelers. If they do not mend their morals, they will soon see no more 
strangers, — sell no more provisions in that market, and be no more 
wanted as guards. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CANA.— MOUNT OF THE BEATITUDES.— TIBERIAS.— PLAIN OF GEN- 
NESARETH—SZAFF AD.— UPPER VALLEY OF THE JORDAN.— PA- 
NIAS.— LEAVING PALESTINE. 

We left Nazareth in a drizzling rain. It had delayed us till half- 
past eight o'clock; but we were anxious to be off", — the air was so hot 
and close in the convent. On the hills we met the breeze ; and we 
enjoyed it without being aware how much we should miss it, and sigh 
for a breath of wind, during the next two days. Travelers going to 
Tabarea (Tiberias) should be warned what the place is like, that they 
may not be deluded, as we were, with pleasant visions of rest by the 
lake-side; but take their survey, and ride away again, before they are 
made ill by the oppression of the atmosphere. I would not judge by 
our own passing experience; but I believe most or all of the travelers 
who have remained any time at Tiberias since the great earthquake, 
have complained of its climate and its vermin. 

At about an hour and a half from Nazareth, Giuseppe turned up the 
hills to the right, and made signs to us to follow him, though the bag- 
gage-mules and servants continued along the valley. We did not know 
what we were to see. We passed through a poor hamlet, which, how- 



470 



EASTERN LIFE. 



ever, had a copious spring, and a good growth of figs : — and we came 
out upon a little Greek church: — the most sordid church, I think, I 
ever saw. We waited outside for the key, — still in entire ignorance 
of where we were. Close by the church-door grew several pomegra- 
nate-trees, two of which were covered with magnificent blossoms. An 
old woman came with the key, and led us up to a stone shaft, breast- 
high, with an irregular hollow at the top, which made it resemble a 
clumsy, unfinished font. This was the only remaining water-pot, we 
were told, which had held the wine at a marriage feasf here; for this 
w^as Cana of Galilee. I need not say that this was no water-pot. Dr. 
Robinson questions this being the real Cana: but tradition is in favor 
of this site ; and there is no evident reason against the ordinary belief. 
I was glad to have been here ; and I brought away two pomegranate 
blossoms, as memorials of the place. 

We were as sure now as wecoald feel at Jerusalem of our being on 
the tracks of the Teacher. Everywhere about the lake, he traveled 
and taught ; and we might, anywhere here, look round us with the 
certainty of seeing what he saw. A mountain near our road to-day, 
about five hours, I think, from Nazareth, called by the natives the 
Horns of Hottein, is named by the Christians the Mount of the Beati- 
tudes, from the tradition that here Jesus delivered the Sermon on the 
Mount. With those who believe that that body of holy instructions 
was delivered on several occasions, and therefore most probably in 
different places, this tradition will have no weight : nor has it, I believe, 
with any but the local guides. It is an oblong hill, green and fertile 
on its eastern side, and with two eminences at one end of its ridge, — 
from which it derives its native name. If Jesus did not sit there to 
teach, he probably reclined there, as on all the hills near, in the course 
of his way-faring, to look abroad : and from hence he could see far. 
He could see over the Plain of Jezreel, which was, to every Jew, so 
full of recollections, at once religious and historical. He could over- 
look the Lake of Galilee, and follow with his eye the fishing-boats 
where were some whom he designed to make fishers of men. He 
could see on the shores, and in the recesses of the hills, and at the 
opening of the Plain of Gennesareth to the north, the cities over whose 
hard worldliness he mourned, conceiving of them as lost, like Tyre 
and Sidon over to the west, and Sodom and Gomorrah to the south. 
Here were all his haunts in this district, in his view at once : — Mount 
Tabor near at hand : and below, the shore of the lake, the boats, Ca- 
pernaum and Bethsaida, and the solitudes to which he withdrew him- 
self for contemplation and prayer, — for rest to his soul. And here he 
could meditate how yet more strongly, yet more clearly and incessantly, 
he could convey to his followers and the multitude his warnings against 
the husky religion of the Pharisees, and his blessings on the pure, the 
sincere, the devoted, the peaceable, and the humble spirit, of which it 
was hard for the pupils of the Scribes and Pharisees to conceive. And 
unlike, indeed, was his method of teaching to theirs. " He taught as 
one having authority, and not as the Scribes." The people were ac- 
customed to book-language, to legal terras, of admonitions about ritual 



THE MOUNT OF BEATITUDES. 



471 



matters: in short, to solemn trifling from mere expositors. Now they 
were refreshed, through their whole heart and soul, by cheerful, fami- 
liar, colloquial, original teaching from a prophet, who spoke without 
book, and so directly and simply that the children might understand. 
Our lifelong reverence for him, and our sabbatical associations with 
the records of his words, naturally unfit us at home for perceiving the 
intense familiarity of his teachings, and the beauty of that method of 
appeal. What we feel to be so deeply true and beautiful we utter re- 
verently, — as we ought : and the imagery is to us something foreign, 
and belonging to a remote poetical and spiritual region ; so that the 
names and images cannot slip over the tongue like those of the corre- 
sponding imagery at home. We even shrink from a full realization of 
the truth as from, a kind of irreverence ; — so that, at this moment, I 
find it difficult to say plainly what I mean. What I mean is plainly 
this. If Jesus were of Saxon race, and came now to reform and free 
our souls, his imagery would be our rural cottages and the alleys of 
our towns ; the redbreast, the dog-rose and bramble ; as in Galilee 
they were the rock and sand-built houses, the ravens and the lilies of 
the field. He would call our political and religious sects, our Magis- 
trates and Bishops, by their ordinary names : and so, assuredly, he 
would the towns which received, and those which rejected his teach- 
ings. It may sound irreverent, but it ought not to do so, to conceive 
of him as saying " Alas ! for you, Liverpool, — alas ! for you, Bristol !" 
and as declaring that proud Edinburgh or London should be humbled. 
When one stands where I stood this day, above the lake, and among 
the wild flowers, and within sight of the places of the denounced cities, 
one feels a more intense relief, — a more cheerful and animated love for 
those eff*ectual discourses, than can ever be felt at home except by such 
as have sufficient strength of imagination and of piety, and sufficient 
knowledge, to transport themselves to the Teacher's side, in his own 
native region, and learn from himself alone, — putting aside all devices 
and superstitions of men, — what it was that he would say to every one 
of us. To my apprehension, on the spot, and with the records of his 
life in my hand, and the recollections of Egypt and of Sinai fresh in 
my mind, nothing could be simpler than his recorded words, and no- 
thing less like what is superstitiously and irreverently taught, as coming 
from him, in most of the churches of Christendom. Here he stood as 
the way, the truth and the life : — the Messiah who was, as he believed, 
to lead his people into a new and spiritual kingdom, into which man- 
kind might enter, when the Law had been fulfilled. Here he stood as 
the truth and the life, to bring men into that closer connection with God 
as their Father which was to be added to their ancient relation to Je- 
hovah as their King. He strove to detach their minds from the forms 
and means of religion, and fix their hearts upon its life and reality. 
He strove to raise them into a condition of earnestness, sincerity, and 
gentle affections towards God, and their neighbors, and their enemies : 
and to fit them thus for entrance upon his new kingdom of righteous- 
ness, whose approaching establishment was his great topic of promise. 
And he used for all this a method of appeal, such as every efi'ectuai 



472 



EASTERN LIFE. 



teacher must use — appeal to their daily knowledge and observation, to 
their social experience, their domestic affections, — in short, their very 
commonest affairs and interests. He spoke of the kneading of bread, 
the bottling of wine, the sowing of seed, the mending of clothes, the 
moth and the rust, and the washing of dishes, as well as of thrones 
of clouds, and of the lightning which shines from one end of the heaven 
to the other. 

The first thing I looked for, on coming within sight of the lake, was 
fishing boats. I had read and heard that we should see none; the 
poor and indolent inhabitants having never replaced the last they had, 
which was destroyed above thirty years ago : but yet, I could not help 
hoping that they might have exerted themselves by this time, to obtain 
the means of fishing in their waters. But they fish merely by casting 
nets, thrown from the beach or the rocks: and there was now no boat, 
nor any sign of human activity, as far as we could see. Mountains, 
valleys and lake all lay dead. At this first view, I thought I had never 
seen a sheet of water so entirely without beauty. Even the Dead Sea 
had looked less hot, less dull, and much less insignificant. This, how- 
ever, was the view from a considerable height; and its aspect improved 
when we had descended the long, winding road, and Tiberias was in 
the foreground, and the waters had become a deep blue, instead of a 
leaden gray. 

But, of all desolations, that of the town is the worst. Outside, it 
has a substantial appearance, from the apparent strength of the walls, 
and the number of their towers : but the walls are split and loosened, 
and the towers decapitated by the earthquake which laid low the rest 
of the city in 1835. Within the gates, there is really scarcely any- 
thing left but heaps of ruins. The town is like one vast dust-hole, 
swarming with vermin. We found afterwards that our late comrades had 
been more prudent than ourselves, and had refused to be housed in the 
town. They pitched their tents outside. We permitted ourselves to 
be guided to the house of a worthy German Jew, who sincerely desires, 
as does his wife, to make his guests comfortable, but who cannot 
achieve it in such a place, and such a climate. — Our sitting-room looked 
tempting when we entered it; shady, airy, with a newly chalked floor, 
and neat deewan, — windows closed only by shutters, — chickens chirp- 
ing just below them,— and a martin's nest built on the top of the chain, 
from which hangs the lamp in winter. It was no fault of our host's 
that we presently felt as if a fever was coming on, — breathless and 
uneasy. This was the fault of the climate ; and for four-and-twenty 
hours after, we did not draw a free breath. We had met with some- 
thing of this before descending to the Lake: as was proved by our not 
having ascended Mount Tabor. 1 earnestly wished it; but the gentle- 
men decreed that it would be imprudent, on account of the heat: and 
they promised that we should go to-morrow. 

On the morrow, I did beg hard to be allowed to go : but the whole 
party were panting, as if in a vapor bath ; my companions were fatigued 
by the wretched night they had had : and the gentlemen declared them- 
selves actually unable to make the exertion. 1 felt that I could, and 



TIBERIAS. 



473 



that the fresh air on the hills would more than compensate for the 
fatigue: and it was nearly settled that I should set off, attended by 
Alee: but we were assured that it would be unsafe for so small a party 
to go : and I was obliged to give it up. This was the only serious 
omission that I am aware of in our whole journey : but there could 
hardly be one which we could regret more. 

We stayed within all the morning, on account of the lieat : but in the 
afternoon, we found the house insufferable, and went out to seek relief 
in change of place. We found the town to be what its appearance 
indicated yesterday, — mere toppled stones patched up into dwellings, 
with ruins lying all about. On many roofs we saw little square cham- 
bers built of reeds, with green boughs for a finish ; — tabernacles to 
sleep in, somewhat like those which used to be on every house top, at 
the old Feasts of Tabernacles. Some of these looked small enough to 
be mere pigeon-houses: but the inhabitants creep into them for the 
night, and sometimes by day, for refuge from the heat and vermin 
below. — We walked southwards beside the Lake, towards the Baths : 
and found the waters clear; the beach composed of large round peb- 
bles ; — the oleanders coming into blossom all along the shore ; — and 
massive ruins strewn about, and even extending a considerable way 
under water. Our host pointed out some of these wrecks as the re- 
mains of a bathing-house which Moses and Miriam had here ! And 
yet this man was a German Jew, who might be expected to know 
something of the entrance of his people upon the Promised Land. 

From time to time, within the last few days, we had met parties of 
travelers who looked like invalids: and, on inquiry, we found they had 
been to these Baths of Tabarea, to which the sick resort from all parts of 
the country. We found a considerable number of people in and about 
the baths to-day. The water, where it bubbles up from the earth, was 
so hot that I could not bear my finger in it for many seconds. It 
leaves a yellow and black scum on the earth and stones over which it 
passes ; and travelers who have bathed in the otherwise cold waters of 
the lake, near where the mineral spring flows in, say that they found 
themselves in a tepid bath. Mrs. Y. and I were permitted to enter the 
women's bath. Through the dense steam, I saw a reservoir in the 
middle of the apartment, where, as I need not say, the water stands to 
cool for some time before it can be entered: — several women were 
standing in it; and those who had come out were sitting on a high 
shelf in a row, to steam themselves thoroughly before they put on 
their clothes. The crowd and the steam were so oppressive, that I 
wondered how they could stay : but the noise was not to be endured 
for a moment. Every woman of them all seemed to be gabbling at the 
top of her voice, and we rushed out after a mere glance, stunned and 
breathless. To this moment, I find it difficult to think of these crea- 
tures as human beings: and certainly I never saw anything, even in 
the lowest slave districts of the United States, which so impressed me 
with a sense of the impassable differences of race. — We sought refresh- 
ment, on our return, in a different sort of bathing. We were longing 
for coolness above everything; so Mrs. Y. and 1 went into the Lake 



474 



EASTERN LIFE. 



from a fine old roofless tower, which had been shattered by the earth- 
quake. At its base, the water was four feet deep; and through the 
wide rents in its wall, the moonlight broke the deep shadows on the 
waters, and rippled on the surface. 

Ibraheem Pasha built some pretty baths at the hot springs we had 
visited; and repaired them two or three times, after injuries from rob- 
bers. But the robbers were the stronger party : and they came so 
often, that the baths are deserted and going to ruin. The marble floor, 
dee wans and reservoir are now all dusty and desolate. 

The refreshment from our bath passed aw ay so immediately that we 
were convinced that our lassitude and distress were from the atmo- 
sphere. We gave orders for a very early departure the next morning, 
and had no comfort meantime. 

Our host had lost his wife, and all his children but one, and was him- 
self lamed, by the earthquake of 1835. It seems strange that he should 
remain in such a place, — marrying a new wife, and rearing a second 
family on the very spot where such a misfortune had happened, and 
might at any moment recur. But Tiberias is one of the four Holy 
Cities of the Talmud ; and is sure, therefore, to be always frequented 
by Jews. We had visited two of the four cities, — Hebron and Jeru- 
salem ; and to-morrow w^e were to arrive at the fourth, Szafl"ad. 

According to our host, the population of Tabarea is at least w^*iat it 
was before the earthquake. Eight hundred people were then destroyed, 
and very few were left. Now there are about a thousand in all: viz., 
400 Mohammedans; 400 Jews; and 200 Christians. 

Before four o'clock, the next morning, April 21st, I was looking 
abroad from a sort of terrace, where I had gone, as soon as dressed, 
for air, when I saw a curious sight. The neighbors were not up ; and 
I overlooked many households asleep on their roofs. They had laid 
their mattresses there, and slept in their ordinary clothes, with a cover- 
let thrown over them. As the day-light brightened upon their faces, 
one after another began to wake,— the children stirring first. They 
rolled and rubbed their eyes, threw ofi' their coverlets, and jumped up 
— dressed for the day apparently. 

From point to point of our journey this day, Tiberias looked well, 
seated on the shore between the hills and the lake, and inclosed by its 
turreted wall. Our road wound up and along the hills, and some- 
times overhung the beach, as w^e went northwards towards the plain 
of Gennesareth. This beach must always have been pretty enough, 
with its boulders, and flowering shrubs, and white pebbles, and clear 
waters, to make it pleasant for the traveler to imagine it, in the days 
when the multitude collected there to greet and hear the Teacher, and 
when the disciples sat there mending their nets, as their boats floated a 
little way from the land. But it is difficult to conceive that this vol- 
canic basin can ever have been a healthy abode for men. As I looked 
over it all this day, it struck me how dreary it must be in a storm. A 
murkiness hangs upon it in the brightest weather: and when, of old, a 
squall came down from among the enclosing hills, and overtook the 
vessel laboring in the midst of the lake, a more dreary scene of ele- 



PLAIN OF GENNESARETH. 



475 



mental commotion could hardly be imagined ; nor a more welcome 
relief when " the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." 

As we descended into the plain of Gennesareth, we perceived it to 
be abundantly watered ; and our track was muddy ; — a new incident 
to us. Migdol, — the old Magdala, — is now a wretched village. We 
passed massive ruins of some ancient structures ; — weed-grown walls 
overhang a clear running stream, and embosomed in blossoming shrubs. 
The plain was scantily cultivated : but so thickly-grown with weeds as 
to show how fertile it might still be. — Clouds passed over us from the 
north-west, sprinkling heavy drops as they went ; and they were suc- 
ceeded by hot sunshine : but these changes seemed to have no effect 
on the weather in the basin below, where all was a leaden gray.— We 
ascended by narrow tracks, rocky hills which occasionally afforded 
some relief of table-land, with its settlements and orchards; but which 
became steeper and longer as we approached Szaffad, (the ancient 
Saphet,) which we reached in about eight hours from Tiberias. In one 
pass, about two hours short of Szaffad, we saw portals in the precipice, 
which told of sepulchres within. 

Szaffad is an extraordinary place ; and I could not but wonder that 
we brought so few associations to the spot as we did. It is the magni- 
ficent crest of some of the loftiest summits in Palestine ; and it is seen 
towering above every object on t^is side Lebanon, from a great distance 
every way. Dr. Robinson saw it from Nazareth; and from it may be 
seen, in clear weather, Carmel, and the mountains of Samaria beyond 
the plain of Esdraelon, and the extremity of the Lake of Tiberias, 
where the Jordan issues from it. The atmosphere was not clear 
enough this evening, for us to see tbese things : but our eyes were 
amply entertained with what lay nearer. — The whole vicinity is very 
fertile, the ruins of former streets being made to support, as terraces, 
the soil from which spring corn, olives, figs and vines, in great quanti- 
ties. The situation of the place is so lofty, and its air so pure in 
comparison with that of the plains in every direction, that it was greatly 
resorted to for health, in the days of its prosperity : and even from 
Damascus the royal children were, in ancient times, sent hither for 
change of air, and enjoyment of the abundant fruits. It is plentifully 
and incessantly watered : so that one would think, — -with good soil, 
air and water, — nothing could impair the natural prosperity of the 
place. Yet it is a most mournful ruin. The earthquake is the foe 
that has laid it low. It played its dreadful pranks as vivaciously here 
as on the lower ground. The town, divided into quarters, lay on the 
summits of four hills, with its massive castle towering above as the 
centre of the noble diadem. Now, these quarters are four enormous 
heaps of rubbish. The houses having been built in tiers, fell, one row 
upon another, so as to make the ruin complete : and now, the vines are 
trained over the fallen roofs ; and from the heaped stones, sordid abodes 
are scooped out, to lodge those who will not leave the fated place. 

Not only are there many who will not leave the place, but numbers 
are perpetually arriving, to live and die at this, the most sacred of the 
four Holy Cities. One of the quarters was appropriated to the Jews ; 



476 



EASTERN LIFE. 



and at one time there were not fewer than 12,000 at Szaffad. While 
the place declined, from being often retaken by Christians and Mo- 
hammedans, other classes of inhabitants left it, or reduced their num- 
bers: but the Jews remained. They had a university and a printing 
establishment, from which they sent forth learned men and the records 
of their lore. One reason of the sacredness of the place is the tradition 
that Queen Esther was born there: another, that many eminent rabbins 
are buried there : a third, that it is one of the four Holy Cities : but 
the strongest reason of all is the prevalent be T that the Messiah will 
first come to Szaffad ; and will reign there for forty years before he 
goes to Jerusalem. Those whom he finds watching, he will highly 
exalt, as the watchers believe; and their hope is to obtain offices of 
honor in his kingdom. Even the dead will be the better for having 
died there : and thus, many a poor Polish or Italian Jew toils and 
saves, and saves and toils, to get to Szaffad, to end his days. On his 
arrival, he is presently stripped of his savings, by the local exactions 
which have been ordained to meet such cases as his; and then he lives 
on as he can : but, be his wretchedness what it may, he never leaves 
Szaffad. The employments here are chiefly indigo-dyeing, spinning 
and weaving cotton, growing fruit, and preparing wine. I observed a 
few palms still, though I thought we had seen the last of them : and 
abundance of pomegranates, lemons and walnuts. 

Our encampment was beside a cemetery, in a little valley between 
two of the four eminences mentioned above. The castle towered 
above it; and the hill sides were marked by winding ways up to the 
summits. Near us was a copious spring, flowing into a cistern, where 
noisy women were thronging all day. When I went in the evening 
to see the spring, the women were boisterous and rude, pulling at my 
dress, trying whether my hat would come off, and so on: even though 
our dragoman was within sight: but when we entered two or three 
houses, to taste wine and make inquiries, the people were very civil. — 
While daylight lasted, there was a row of gazers crouched on the grass 
before the tent, peeping in so pertinaciously, — in spite of warning, and 
a few blows from the servants, that we were obliged to let down the 
curtains. We spent the daylight hours in walking about the remains 
of the town, and looking abroad from the loftiest points. I was on 
nearly the highest ground when the sun went down behind the western 
mountain, dim, and as pale as the moon. All transparency seem-ed to 
be departing from the atmosphere ; and where the Sea of Tiberias 
should have been, there was at last only a blot of dark gray vapor. 
The wind was rising and falling, and the aspect of this once great city 
and stronghold was most cheerless. 

The night and morning being rainy, we rose late, — at half past six ; 
and merely looked about us, without attempting to start till the weather 
cleared : but by nine o'clock, the clouds were gone, except a few fleeces 
hanging about the mountains; and, as we descended Djebel Szaffad, 
we saw to the utmost advantage the wonderful ruin crowning the steeps 
above us, and the beautiful Upper Valley of the Jordan, now opening 
before us. Its scenery is of a mild and soft character : and we saw it 



UPPER VALLEY OF THE JORDAN. 



477 



well under the gleamy lights of a changing day. We could fancy we 
saw almost to Damascus, over the intervening mountain ranges. But 
we soon descended so far as rapidly to narrow the view ; and pre- 
sently we found ourselves in a gorge, leading to a rich little plain, or 
recess among the hills, where the fields were waving with corn, and 
much catde was collected about a spring in the rock, with, apparently, 
scarcely any one near to take care of either. We found that this cul- 
tivation was the work of the industrious SzafTad people, who, with a 
much better soil and fu) return, seem to practice a tillage as laborious 
as that of the people ot the Alps. 

Passing over low hills to the left, we descended upon the plain of 
the Upper Jordan, where the tracks were so well marked that I felt 
myself independent of our guides, and could ride on as I pleased. 
There was a little dull lake lying in the plain, to the north, with flat, 
swampy shores and gray waters, which would not have interested us 
but for its ancient reputation. This was Lake Houle, — " the Waters 
of Merom," of Scripture, — where Joshua conquered the kings of 
Canaan who had united their forces there. A space of five miles in- 
tervenes between this lake and the hills at whose base we were riding. 
No two travelers agree about its size ; the reason of which is that it is 
always changing, — being a mere marsh in the hot season, and a brim- 
ming lake after the rains of winter. We saw it in its half and half 
state ; and without the enlivenment of the water fowl which scream 
and plash away among its sedges, in their own season. 

The character of the scenery had now entirely changed, and become 
something quite new to us. The fatness of the valley reminded us, 
through this and the succeeding day, of all the scripture imagery relat- 
ing to fertility which we had not seen exemplified in the higher and 
drier western regions. Even here, we were on high ground compared 
with that part of the Jordan valley which we had struck at Jericho : 
for the waters of Lake Houle ratde down a long descent for eight of 
the ten miles which lie between it and the Sea of Tiberias ; and then 
again flow down a descent all the way to the Dead Sea : but even here, 
at the upper end of the Jordan valley, there were moisture and marsh 
and aquatic produce on every hand. On the richest of the pastures 
were feeding the flocks of the Bedoueens, while the black tents of the 
herdsmen speckled the uplands. The acacia and the plane began to 
draw together in clumps, and spread a broader shade. The cranes 
waded in taller grass, and winged their flight in larger flocks. Fat 
buffalo wallowed in the pools : and innumerable little tortoises perked 
up their impudent heads from every streamlet and swamp. Men and 
boys stood almost hidden in the canebrakes, cutting reeds: ants swarmed 
in the tracks, and shining lizards darted about among the stones at the 
skirts of the hills. Here and there were long reaches of tilled land, 
where the people were busy among their barley crops : and the smokes 
of two or three hamlets arose from promontories that jutted out into 
the streams which were making their way to the Jordan. 

While we were in the full enjoyment of all this, we were delighted 
to learn that we were to stop at one of the most tempting spots we had 



478 



EASTERN LIFE. 



seen. We had traveled little more than four hours : but we had ar- 
rived at the frontier line which divides the Pashalics of Acre and Da- 
mascus ; and there was an establishment of guards which it was as well 
to take advantage of for our security at night. These people take toll 
here ; — seven piastres for every loaded camel, and so on. They live 
in reed huts, — very picturesque, but little serviceable: and the settle- 
ment consists merely of three or four of these huts, and a mill. The 
stream below the mill spreads out among reeds and little thickets ; and 
it is crossed by a long row of stepping-stones. The mill-race guided 
us up to a pile of rocks, behind which lay a large pond, or small lake, 
with tiny pebbly beaches, and promontories and litde precipices, — the 
whole hedged in by close thickets of flowering oleanders and other 
blossoming shrubs. From one of these tiny white beaches, I saw, by 
a pencil of light in a dark cove, a black duck at anchor ; so still that it 
looked as if it would never move again. I returned to the tent for 
bathing apparatus ; crossed the stream by the stepping-stones, went 
behind the deserted mill, and into the mill-race. The water was so 
warm that I was tempted to explore this delicious nook by means of it. 
One dark recess or cavern, in which the water was not above three 
feet deep, looked most enticing. I found it hung with vines, and tufted 
with delicate ferns, which waved in the continual breeze made by the 
passage of the water. A gush of light through a very low arch in the 
rock tempted me on. I stooped through it, and found myself in the 
shady cove I had seen from the little beach, with the black duck beside 
me, still at anchor. 

Many hours of the day were yet before us, for rambling, reading, 
sewing and bringing up our journals. I do not know that we had 
anywhere a more welcome rest than here on this frontier line of Da- 
mascus. And it was not quite our last day in the Holy Land. 

We saw from our camp a mysterious-looking arch, high up on the 
western hill side. I went before breakfast, the next morning (April 
23d), to see what it was. I obtained a glorious view by going ; but I 
was no wiser about the arch. I found three arches — two of them being 
parallel, built close together, and corresponding precisely to the mouth 
of the cave before which they stood. An aqueduct being out of the ques- 
tion in such a place, I cannot imagine what these erections could be. 
The cave, and two others near, were evidently in use; for there were 
rags and mats strewn about, and recent marks of fire. The view was 
so exquisite, from the verge of the plain to the south, to the snowy peak 
of Hermon on the north, that I would fain have stayed on the heights, 
to see the first flood of sunshine cast over the scene : but far below, 
Giuseppe was setting our breakfast table in the open air: and I must go. 

To-day we crossed the valley of the Jordan at its northern end, 
which is closed in by Mount Hermon, now called Djebel Sheikh. The 
place where we took our mid-day rest was the ancient Dan. We now 
knew the country from Dan to Beersheba. At the extremity of the 
Valley, the mountains gradually subside — their lower slopes being 
wooded hills, which we skirted during the latter part of this day's ride. 
We were now familiar with the course of the Jordan — from its springs, 



PANIAS. 



479 



which we were about to visit, to its present southern limit — the Dead 
Sea — and again, to the point where it is believed to have once flowed 
into the Red Sea at Akaba. We had in Edom traveled in its ancient 
channel ; that channel which has been dry for some thousands of years; 
and now we were visiting its sources. 

Before we reached the first of these, we crossed a fine old bridge, 
of three arches, roughly paved at the top, and without any parapet, 
though it sprang to a great height above the rushing river. Its yellow 
stone contrasted finely with the dark green of the thickets which co- 
vered the banks of the stream ; and the profusion of the blossoms of the 
oleander cast a pink glow over these dark thickets. Several herdsmen 
had brought their cattle down to drink ; and men and cattle were re- 
posing in the shade. It was an exquisite picture. 

The first of the supposed sources of the Jordan which we reached 
was atTel-el-Kader. A pretty wooded hill, level at the top, rises from 
the plain ; and from its base issue some abundant springs, which dash 
forward among stones so as to make a rapid. Here we stayed some 
time to rest ; and I sat on a large stone in the water, watching the bub- 
bling out of the spring among the ferns and rock fissures, and shaded 
by a fig-tree loaded with green fruit. 

From thence to Panias — the Csesarea Philippi of the New Testament 
— our ride was through scenery resembling that which we had called 
park-land between Nazareth and Mount Carmel. We had the same 
slopes, broken banks, shady hollows and sunny glades ; — and the same 
wild flowers by the way side. 

We had long seen the great Saracenic castle of Panias on its moun- 
tain top — looking almost too high to be reached by man or beast. As 
we approached we found another castle below, standing beside the 
village : and ancient ruins appeared to be scattered here and there, far 
and wide over the gloriously beautiful scene. Out of Poussin's pic- 
tures, I never saw anything in the least like the scene, as we looked at 
it from under the shade of the olive grove wherein our tents were pitched. 
Yet Poussin himself, who put more objects distinctly into his land- 
scapes than any other painter, could not have included all that was 
here harmoniously combined by Nature's master hand ; — the deep 
shadow from beneath which we looked forth — the undulating ground — 
the high grass and weeds — the ravine below — the massive peaked ruin 
near — the red rocks in front — the western mountains — the town on its 
terrace, embosomed in woods and hills — the poplar clump — the mul- 
berry grove — the gay horsemen fording the stream — and the high 
grounds backing all ; — this combination was magnificent. In Europe, 
how far would travelers go to see such a landscape ! 

Three of us set forth immediately, to learn something of the objects 
of the place : but our guide could speak nothing but Arabic ; and he led 
us by such a toilsome path, over rubbish and among a perfect jungle of 
weeds, that I turned back, leaving the gentlemen to reconnoitre in pre- 
paration for to-morrow's sight seeing, while I went dow^n into the ravine 
to bathe. The stream gushed between two faces of rock, where the 
wild vines made a natural trellise overhead ; and under that green canopy 



480 



EASTERN LIFE. 



I was tempted on and on by the sound of a waterfall, which, pouring 
down from the foundations of an old ruin, made a charming shower 
bath. What a luxury was our daily revel in cold water, after our re- 
cent weeks of Desert traveling ! 

Meantime, the gentlemen found the shrine of old Pan,— from whom 
the place derived its most ancient and most modern name ; the Roman 
name by which it was known at the time of the New Testament his- 
tory being intermediate between the two. We went to it, the next 
morning ; and an extraordinary place we found it. In a precipitous 
face of rock is a large, dim grotto, — perfectly dry when we were there, 
and showing no trace of the passage of waters. A fig tree issued from 
a crevice in the cave, and, reaching the roof, and thence drooping its 
large leaves, filled the place with a soft green light. In the depth of 
the recess was a niche, — empty now ; for the great Pan is dead ! 
Above the cave, in the face of the rock, is a large niche ; and others 
are beside it, each at a lower height, till two just show themselves above 
the stony ground. These niches are arched off with graceful shell 
ornaments ; and in one of them is the base of a statue, showing how 
it had been occupied. These were the shrines of the Nymphs ; now 
empty ; — for the Nymphs fled when the great Pan died. When I 
used to read, over and over, that fine old story of how, when the hea- 
venly host told the shepherds at Bethlehem of the birth of Christ, a 
deep groan, heard through all the isles of Greece, told that the great 
Pan was dead, and that all the royalty of Olympus was dethroned, and 
the several deities were sent wandering in cold and darkness, how little 
did I dream that I should ever visit any spot where the noble fable 
would appear like historical truth ! Yet here was the place ! As 
Osiris had passed away before ; and the widowed Isis, who was to 
have mourned him eternally, had also melted away ; and Pan, whether 
another or the same, succeeded him in the homage of men ; — so Pan, 
in his turn, retired and humbled himself when this beloved fountain of 
his was taken from him, and called Jordan, and then pined and died 
when one was born by whom his empire was overthrown. It was 
when he thus retired, in the decline of his glory, that this spot assumed 
its Hebrew sanctity ; — a sanctity miserably understood and expressed, 
as we see by the setting up of golden calves to Jehovah, as the 
Araun of the Hebrews, on this northern limit of the Promised Land, 
and at the source of its great river ; and before it was hallowed afresh 
at the death of Pan, Herod here offered his flatteries to Roman power, 
by building a great palace for the Emperor, and calling the old Panium 
by the name of Caesarea Philippi. This was the name of the place 
when he came hither whose Gospel of Peace was disarming and de- 
throning the old idols of mankind. Hither he came, not waging war 
with idols or with men, but walking among these hills, asking of his 
followers,* " Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ?" and 
then charging " his disciples that they should tell no man that he was 
Jesus the Christ." Here it was that he made those promises to Peter 
of high office in his approaching kingdom, on which the Romish church 



* Matt. XVI. 13, 20; Mark VIII. 27, 30. 



PANIAS. 



481 



has built her power, and on the plea of which she maintains and will 
long maintain it. In that church the discrowned deities, dismissed 
from their shrines here and elsewhere, have found a long refuge. If 
Pan is dead, they are not : for all the idolatries most congenial to un- 
disciplined human nature are concentrated there, and brought into 
strange association with the faith and name of him at whose birth they 
came down from their thrones. And their power is great enough still, 
outside the pale of that church, as well as within it, to desecrate and 
corrupt the faith which has succeeded to their own. They have but 
too much part still, every one of them, from Osiris to the latest of his 
Syrian and Greek progeny, in the faith which goes by the name of 
Christ, to the dishonor of that holy name. 

To this spot he came, — probably to see the flowing forth of Jordan 
from the rock. In gazing at that, he must have seen these niches, and 
the inscriptions which show in whose honor they were made. What 
a singular and most interesting union of ideas this is ! It rouses our 
minds to read of Paul at Athens, — and our classical and religious asso- 
ciations are curiously blended when we read his address uttered before 
the altar, — that most venerable altar, — of the Unknown God. But what 
is that to this ! Here came Jesus, to the shrines of Pan and the 
Nymphs, and had their statues probably, and certainly their sculptured 
shells and glorifying inscriptions, before his eyes. No place could be 
a fitter one in which to speak privately to his followers of his Messiah- 
ship and his approaching kingdom, and in which to distinguish by ex- 
traordinary promises the follower who, being the first to acknowledge 
his Messiahship, was selected by him to be the main support of his 
anticipated empire. 

The springs over which Pan and the nymphs held special watch 
were usually beautiful, in themselves or in their environs. And if the 
waters here did ever really flow out of the cave itself, nothing could 
well be more striking. They are generally represented as gushing from 
the cave ; and even Burckhardt, the most reliable of reporters, says, 
" the largest niche is above a spacious cavern, under which the river 
rises." As it certainly rose at the foot of the rock, and was first seen 
issuing from the stones, and not from the cavern at all, when we were 
there, it is satisfactory to find that Seetzen says, " the copious source 
of the river of Panias rises near a remarkable grotto in the rock," &c. 
&c. I cannot understand how so many authorities can assign the more 
picturesque origin to this spring, when the cave was certainly perfectly 
dry when we visited it, and the stream flowed forth in a different direc- 
tion, and at a distance of several yards. This cannot, I imagine, be a 
variable circumstance, on which travelers might differ without being 
wrong, as in the case of the qualities of the water of the Dead Sea, 
and other instances. 

The later faith which has transcended all preceding religions in its 
power over the human race, — the Mohammedan, which has won its tens 
of thousands to the thousands of any other faith well known to us, — 
is not without its representative here. Towering above the shrines of 
the Greek deities, and the source of the sacred Hebrew river, and the 
31 



482 



EASTERN LIFE. 



site of the palace of the Caesars, and the fields where Jesus walked, is 
the great Saracenic castle, held for ages in the name of Allah and 
Mohammed his Prophet. We saw it long, this day, as we were riding 
over the boundary hills of Palestine. 

These were our last hours in the Holy Land. From these heights 
we looked back upon a land of most variegated scenery ; and, I could 
not but feel, of faiths curiously commingled, strong as was the Jewish 
profession of unity of faith and of race. The main feature of its faith, 
however, its monotheism, finally remained unchanged for so long as 
to serve as a basis for its distinctive character before the world. 
Though allegorically impaired by the Pharisaic sect before the time of 
Christ, and by the Alexandrian and other Christian parties ever since, 
that great doctrine has remained, on the whole, practically established: 
and this it is which distinguishes this birth-place of a religious faith 
above perhaps every other on earth. Next to this ranks the distinc- 
tion given it by the appearance of Christ. When men shall have 
learned to receive his doctrine in the simplicity with which he gave it, 
— to receive it from himself, from his life and from his words, — they 
will probably become aware that it is its commixture with superstitions 
and institutions older than itself v/hich is the cause of its not having 
been more extensive and effectual in its operation than the history of 
eighteen centuries shows it to have been. — Encumbered with much 
that was never contemplated by the Teacher himself, and that is incom- 
patible with the whole spirit of his gospel ; — encumbered with a priest- 
hood and ritual of its own, and adulterated with more or fewer of the 
superstitions of all the nations who ministered to the Hebrew mind, it 
is no wonder that the true doctrine of Christ is overlaid and almost 
destroyed. The Paternity of God, extending to all men ; the infallible 
operation of His Will or Providence ; His strict Moral Government, 
by which moral retribution is inevitable ; the brotherhood of the whole 
human race, and in that the promise of peace on earth and good will 
towards men : — and the establishment of a spiritual kingdom on earth, 
of which he should be Prince and his followers the administrators, the 
dead rising to enter into it, and the living to be admitted without death : 
— the expiration of the Jewish Law on the establishment of this king- 
dom, and the spiritual nature of the new religion, which was to have 
the heaven and the earth for its temple, and the whole body of be- 
lievers for its priests; — these were the points of faith which appear to 
have been ofi'ered by Jesus himself; — the simple Glad Tidings which 
the earnest disciple hears from him when listening to his voice alone 
in the retirements of Palestine, sequestered from the embarrassing 
echoes of other countries and later times. — It was thus that Palestine 
and its Faith appeared to one, at least, as I looked back this day, from 
the ridge of the eastern hills, for the last time upon the Valley of the 
Jordan. 



PART IV. 

SYEIA AND ITS FAITH. 



" Thus in the faiths old Heathendom that shook. 
Were different powers of strife. 
Mohammed's truth lay in a holy Book, 
Christ's in a sacred Life."' 

Milms. Palm Leaves. 

" Call it not false : look not at the falsehood of it : look at the truth of it. For these 
twelve centuries it (Mohammedanism) has been the religion and life guidance of 
the fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind. Above all, it has been a religion 
heartily believed." Carlyle. Hero Worship, p. 123. 

" It is the promise of Christ to make us all one flock ; but how and when this 
union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four members of reli- 
gion" (Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans), "we hold a slender propor- 
tion. There are, I confess, some new additions, yet small to those which accrue to 
our adversaries, and those only drawn from the revolt of Pagans, men but of nega- 
tive impieties, and such as deny Christ, but because they never heard of him. But 
the religion of the Jew is expressly against the Christian, and the Mohammedan 
against both."' Sir Thomas Browne. Religio Medici. 

" I am pleased with contemplations which trace Piety to so pure and noble a 
source ; which show that good men have not been able to differ so much from each 
other as they imagined ; that amidst all the deviations of the understanding, the bene- 
ficent necessity of their nature keeps alive the same sacred feelings." 

Sir James Mackintosh. Life^ II. p. 123. 



; 



SYRIA AND ITS TAITH. 



CHAPTER I. 

ENTRANCE UPON THE HIGH LANDS OF SYRIA.— NTMROD'S TOMB.— 
FIELD OF DAMASCUS.— DAMASCUS AND ENVIRONS.— SOME CHA- 
RACTERISTICS OF MOHAMMEDANISM.— DAMASCUS AS A RESI- 
DENCE. 

The ridge which hid Palestine from us was soon passed ; and in the 
same moment we found ourselves in a new country, with new thoughts, 
and among a new people. On the shrubby hills which we passed over, 
under the protection of the towering Djebel Sheikh, we found black- 
thorn in blossom, just as it might be in England on the same day 
(April 24th). We rode not far beneath the snow, when we had reached 
a height equivalent to three-fourths of the height of the Antilibanus 
range, which we had on our left hand ; and for some miles we passed 
among volcanic debris — among heaps of lava, and hillocks of burnt 
stones, black and dreary. In the midst of these, in a grassy meadow, 
lay a brimming pond, so perfectly round that the geologist of the party 
pointed it out as probably the crater of an extinct volcano. — Then there 
were upland plains — large table lands, half covered with flocks, show- 
ing that we had fairly entered upon the pastoral districts of the East. 
The towns and villages did not crown the eminences, or nestle in the 
valleys, as in Palestine ; but were planted on the sides of the moun- 
tain, or in its recesses, on shelves of rock. One or two of them were 
exactly like a set of book-shelves, with houses for volumes ; and their 
gardens below were on a slope so steep that, if it had not bulged, it is 
inconceivable how the soil could be retained. The houses were no 
longer of stone, hewn or irregular, but of mud — so smoothly plastered, 
and so carefully squared in form, as to carry back our thoughts to Nu- 
bia — these being exactly like those neat African huts, except that they 
had no pyramidal inclination. The sound of waters was all about us. 
Instead of the still pools and gentle springs of Palestine, we had here 
a rush of waters on every hand. Artificial water-courses were above 
us on the left hand, and below us on the right; our path was often 
flooded where the mountain streams burst, or overflowed their channels ; 
and more than one of the villages seemed almost made up of mills. — 
Almost the only feature which was like Palestine was the caves of the 
limestone rocks, with their wrought entrances. After we left the black 



486 



EASTERN LIFE. 



volcanic debris, we came upon fantastic white limestone hills, which 
gave a curious yellow tint to the landscape, when they formed a fore- 
ground to the snows of Djebel Sheikh. 

As for the people — the herdsmen on these upland plains were much 
like Arab herdsmen everywhere ; but among the first people we met 
were two Druse women. The horn looked less monstrous than I had 
expected ; and these women were so handsomely dressed, and looked 
so well, with their gold ornaments, down each side of the face under 
the veil, that the impression made on us by the first Druse women we 
had seen was very favorable. Two pretty children were with them, 
who returned my salutation with much grace. I used to salute (by 
touching the forehead and breast) all the gray-haired people I met in 
these mountains ; and all the children and most others : and my salu- 
tation was, without a single exception, returned. It certainly pleased, 
rather than displeased, the people ; and it gave me a good opportunity 
of seeing their faces. The horn appears to be the point of honor with 
the Druse woman, as the beard is that of the Eastern man. When the 
bride assumes the horn, and hangs the veil over it, she presents her 
husband with a dagger, and desires him to kill her if she proves un- 
faithful. The Druse woman rarely does prove unfaithful ; but, in such 
a case, the husband returns her horn to her family without explanation; 
and they know that the dagger has done its work, and that the wife 
will be heard of no more. 

As for the new thoughts that we plunged into, when we had passed 
that ridge, they were such as, 1 suppose, occur naturally in this extra- 
ordinary country, where the diversity of faiths is greater than in any 
land which the English traveler enters. In Egypt, there was but 
one faith, during the ages on which our attention was fixed through- 
out our Nile voyage. The Greeks and others derived gods from Egypt, 
but never added one to the Egyptian pantheon. In the Sinai penin- 
sula, we were concerned w^ith only one ; for there also, our interests 
were altogether in the past. In Palestine, we found the meeting-point 
of all the faiths of the ancient world — the reservoir into which flowed 
streams from all the heights of human thought; and we saw how, from 
this reservoir, one came to send forth among men, purer waters of life 
than had ever hitherto been dispensed. This gave a distinctiveness to 
Palestine, among the homes of the Faiths, greater than Egypt or Sinai 
could claim, inasmuch as the latest of these faiths was more fit for uni- 
versal adoption in the course of ages. Whether all were derived from 
some primitive Ideas, we know not; nor can ever know but by new 
light being cast on early Egyptian history. That none were found to 
suffice is proved by each having issued in some other; but each marks 
its own region of the East, as the birthplace of one of the leading faiths 
of the world. We had now entered a country where no leading faith 
had its origin, but where all are found at this day, existing in vigor, but 
in conflict; and I, for one, had my mind eagerly awake to observe 
their operation. There was no more repose now, as for some weeks 
past, on a familiar faith, whose origin and progress we could trace from 
hill to hill, by valley, lake and river along our road. We could no 



nimrod's tomb. 



487 



more trace the simple Christianity of Christ himself, in visiting his 
haunts, but were entering upon the scene of an extraordinary congress 
of Deities, brought together, not to form a pantheon, but by the accidents 
of time, and the unsatisfied needs of liuman nature. 

We began at the earliest date. Our resting-place, this first night in 
the Damascene territory, was at Nimrod's Tomb. The very name 
carried us back further in the world's history than our imaginations 
had traveled since we left Egypt. It is true, the Jews hold traditions 
of Nimrod, which would make him live no longer ago than Abraham. 
They say that Nimrod cast Abraham into the fire for not worshiping 
the sun ; but that Jehovah forbade the flames to touch him, and brought 
him into Canaan. But other traditions represent Nimrod as seceding 
from the company who built Babel, in disgust at their immoralities. 
This would make him much older than Abraham. At all events, in 
the traditions of Nimrod, and in the remains of the ancient pyramidal 
fire altars which are scattered about the country, we have traces of the 
earliest worship known to have been practised here. And this wor- 
ship is believed to exist still, in certain recesses of the Lebanon. The 
worship of the sun, as direct and unmixed as it ever was at Baalbec or 
at Samaria in Jezebel's days, is believed to be practised at this hour in 
some retired places of the land we were now entering upon.' — Then, 
there is the old Egyptian method, with a good deal of its doctrine, ex- 
isting among the Druses. It is very difficult to ascertain what their 
faith and worship are, because they have mysteries, like the men of 
old; and these mysteries are as well concealed as of old. Some 
suppose them to bear about the same relation to the Mohammedans 
as the Samaritans did to the Jews : and there may be among them 
about as much of Egyptian philosophy and faith mixed with their Mo- 
hammedanism as the Samaritans had of Assyrian faith and worship 
incorporated with their Judaism. Their incarnate Messiah, Hakim, 
(to whom there is an inscription in a mosque at Cairo as the Supreme 
God,) may contain some Jewish and some Christian elements : but the 
division of castes, and the practices of their mysteries among the Druses, 
remind one strongly of the old Egyptians :— and yet the Druses are an 
ofl'set from Mohammedanism.— There are Jews, — a very few, — much 
like what the oriental Jews of these days usually are. — Then there 
are Christians of many sorts ; and all so unlike anything that the 
biographers of Christ could have conceived of, that, but for the lights 
of history, it would be a wonder how they ever came by the name. 
Besides the ordinary Greek and Latin Christians, Armenians and Nes- 
torians, there are the Maronites ; a curious kind of Christians, who, at 
one and the same time, practice monachism to an extraordinary extent, 
and preserve the old oriental Law of Revenge. They read the Psalter, 
and two or three puzzling books on Divinity, — Thomas Aquinas being 
their favorite author; and, for the rest, though they are in communion 
with Rome, they are nearly independent in their proceedings under 
their own patriarch, and present as barbarous a phase of Christianity 
as can anywhere be found. — Outnumbering all these religious bodies 
together, are, of course, the Mohammedans, — the most interesting off- 



488 



EASTERN LIFE. 



set from Christianity that has yet been seen : not only from the deriva- 
tion and history of the faith, but because its prevalence, — wider than 
that of any other faith, — (or any other familiarly known to us,) — 
shows what must be its adaptation to human nature, and, in that, how 
indispensable must be its appearance in the history of man. — Here is a 
diversity of faiths, in this region which has originated none ! Instead 
of an influx of thought from various regions, issuing in a fresh and 
invigorating faith, we have here a cluster of religious sects, none com- 
municating with any others, and none, therefore, deriving life from any 
new source. From the worship of Baal and Astarte to the ritual of 
Mohammed, all exist still: and we have only to rejoice that a religion 
so good, in comparison with the rest, as that of Mohammed, prevails 
over the others to the extent that it does. 

This latest and most prevalent faith seemed almost too modern to 
be attended to this first day, when, with every advance into the recesses 
of this awful old mountain region, — this Antilibanus, of which we used 
to read in our childhood almost as of the world before the flood, we 
seemed to be stepping over into the remote ages. Ascending from one 
table-land to another, we came out, late in the afternoon, upon very 
high ground, where the soil was wet, the crops poor, the wind very 
cold, and the enclosing mountains dim and dreary with haze and snow. 
As I repeatedly turned my horse to look behind me and to the left, the 
impression of what I saw was very awe-striking. Djebel Sheikh, 
whose snowy summit had appeared sky-high all the way from the 
further verge of the Plain of Esdraelon, now seemed to have subsided 
to a common hill; so did the chain rise and swell as it retired north- 
eastward. Shrouded and ghost-like, the mountains closed us in : and 
as I gazed at them, I longed to look into their hidden valleys and re- 
cesses, to see how human faith was faring: — to see the shrines of Baal, 
and the smoke of his altars among the rocks; to hear from some plat- 
form on the heights, the bell of the Maronite convent chapel: — to look 
in upon the vigils of the Druses, as their initiated class, the Intelli- 
gents, held the mysteries ; and to see, in some Mohammedan village 
on the uplands, the pious families already in preparation for joining 
the next caravan, when it should set forth from Damascus for Mekkeh. 
The mountain chains of the earth retain in every way their conserva- 
tive function. If they preserve untouched and unwasted their masses 
of mineral wealth, their treasure of gems, their accumulated snows, 
and the unsunned sources of all rivers, not less do they harbor and 
guard the characteristics of the tribes of men, and their confiding de- 
posits of their respective faiths. 

We stopped on a ridge, misty and cold, where there is a poor ham- 
let beside Nimrod's Tomb. The great Hunter, said to be the first of 
men who was made a king and wore a crown, is declared to be still 
lying under some stones, about three hundred yards from our tents. 
This is doubtless quite as true as that a building close at hand, whose 
ruined walls are composed of very large stones, is Nimrod's casde. 
It appears that the tradition about the tomb is really old; and that 
ruins which have lost their names are all called after the tomb. — This 



FIELD OF DAMASCUS. 



489 



hamlet is Kferhoura. Its situation is bleak; but there are two little 
fertile dells on either side of the ridge ; and the people seemed to be 
tilling their fields with care and success. The evening was so cold 
that we should have been glad of a fire in our tent : but there was no 
more charcoal left than would be wanted to boil the kettle in the morn- 
ing. All night, the wind was high ; and the servants were kept from 
their rest, knocking in the tent-pegs, that our whole establishment 
might not fly away. 

On the 3d of December, it had been proposed, on board our Nile 
boat, and agreed to nem. con., that we should go to Damascus. And 
now, on the morning of the 25th of April, we were within a few miles 
of it. Nothing could be less like our notions of Damascus and its 
climate than the spot we were on. It was far more like Westmore- 
land in March ; and my heart warmed to it for that reason, in spite of 
the cold gusts, which brought mists and flying showers upon us from 
the mountains. Mrs. Y. and I sat under a rock and an umbrella, 
reading about the Druses, while the tents were struck : — quite a new 
piece of oriental experience ! There was, however, such a rainbow 
as I suppose was never seen in Westmoreland, — first inclosing a group 
of mountains, and then confounding their outlines with its colors. — ■ 
We descended considerably to the Field of Damascus, — the plain 
amidst which the city is placed; but still it was evident that this plain 
itself is high ground, in comparison with the Valley of the Jordan. 
The wind was so strong, and blew so incessantly, that we could not 
have traveled at all, if it had not been in our backs. 

This Field of Damascus is very striking ; — a plain of yellowish soil, 
scantily tilled, or, at least, showing to-day very scanty crops; with 
bushes and low trees sprinkled here and there, and many streams 
crossing the track ; and the whole plain closed in by many-tinted moun- 
tains, of which Lebanon is the crown. Far away, at three hours' 
journey from the hills we descended, a black stripe lay straight across 
the plain, which, as we approached, assumed more and more the ap- 
pearance of what it really was, a " verdurous wall of Paradise." Above 
the great mass of verdure, sprang the loftiest poplars I ever saw ; and 
when we came within a few miles, the pale minarets appeared above 
the woods, in rivalship with the dark poplars. Embosomed in these 
woods lies Damascus. 

On our way, we saw the Mirage in great perfection. If I had not 
known what the plain really contained, I should have been completely 
deceived : and, as it was, I was perplexed about what was real and 
what mere semblance. Before us was a wide gleaming lake, with 
wooded shores. It was these shores that perplexed me; for I could 
allow for the water. As we approached, the vision flaked away, and 
formed again behind us; only, the waters behind looked gray and dark, 
whereas they were gleamy when in front. The woods on the shore 
resolved themselves into scrubby bushes, — the hiding places, one might 
suppose, of naughty little mocking elves. There is something unpleasant 
and disheartening in the sensation of the dissolution of a vivid mirage, 
even when one is not in want of water and shade. It gives one a 



490 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Strange impression that one must be ill : and when this is added to the 
real suffering of the wayfarer in the Desert, the misery must be cruel. 

After riding three hours over this plain, and approaching the line of 
verdure so near as to see yellow walls and towers within the screen, 
Giuseppe told me we were at Damascus. I was rather disappointed ; 
for I had read of the thirty miles of verdure and woods amidst which 
the city stands, and 1 had expected much from the ride among the trees. — 
The walls turned out to be those of a village ; and I soon discovered 
that Giuseppe called the woods Damascus, as well as the city. We 
rode on still for two hours, along green tracks, past gravel pits and 
verdant hollows, round villages, through cemeteries, under the shade of 
glorious groves ! It is truly a paradise. The fields and orchards are 
one; — a thing I never saw elsewhere. Out of thick crops of wheat 
and barley and beans rise fruit and forest trees, which do not seem to 
injure the vegetation below with their shade. The abundant growth 
of the walnut exceeds that of any one tree I ever saw, unless it be the 
apple in the United States. We found that, besides exporting a great 
quantity of walnuts, a large proportion of the people make them their 
chief food, eating them as tlie Spaniards do chestnuts. — I saw a vine 
hanging out its young leaves and tendrils from a walnut, at least thirty 
feet from the ground. The citron perfumes the air for many miles 
round the city; and the fig trees are of vast size. The pomegranate 
and orange grow in thickets. There is the trickling of water on every 
hand. W^herever you go, there is a trotting brook, or a full and silent 
stream beside the track ; and you have frequently to cross from one 
vivid green meadow to another, by fording, or by little bridges. These 
streams are all from the river beloved by Naaman of old. He might 
well ask whether the Jordan was better than Pharpar and Abana, the 
rivers of Damascus. These streams, the old Pharpar and Abana, 
join a little way from the city, and are called the Barrada. The 
waters are carried in innumerable channels over the whole field of 
verdure; they again unite in a single stream, which is lost in a lake or 
swamp called the Lake of the Meadow. 

It was not easy to mistake the city walls when at last we came to 
them. They are rather high, but not so as entirely to exclude the 
view of the cupolas and minarets within. There are many towers 
upon the walls; but they are, for the most part, decapitated. We rode 
round at least half the city, as we were to enter by the eastern gate. 
It was something to remember that this is the oldest known city in the 
world. Abraham's steward came from Damascus, the man in the city 
being mentioned in Genesis XV. 2. From its beauty and value, it 
has in all ages been an object of contention ; but whenever shattered 
by sieges and foes, it has risen again; and here it is still, one of the 
gems of the earth. By this, no one means that its beauty is in its 
streets. Nothing can well be more ugly than they are, with their long 
lines of black yellow walls, unbroken but by a low ordinary door, 
here and there: — and the pavement is bad; though not so execrable as 
that of Jerusalem. There are few edifices which can be favorably- 
seen within the walls ; so that the charm of Damascus is not of that 



DAMASCUS AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



491 



kind which we usually mean when we praise a city for beauty. The 
interior of its best houses is exquisite ; and the bazaars are finer than 
those of Cairo, and, as I am told, than those of Constantinople. But 
the glory of El Sham, (as the Arabs call this beloved city of theirs,) 
is in its position, which truly warrants all the raptures of all ages, 
from the time when Abraham made Eliezer of Damascus his steward, 
till now. 

Adjoining the gate by which we entered is a walled-up portal, with 
two arches, now filled with masonry. This is the gate by which Paul 
entered Damascus: and the street by which we went from this entrance 
to our hotel, without a turn to the right or the left, is still called 
" Straight." In a street to the right of this, as you enter the city, is 
shown the house which is pretended to be that of Ananias ; and in a 
niche of a chamber therein is the apostle said to have received his 
sight. — In the city wall is shown the aperture through which he was 
let down in a basket : and there is a tomb in the cemetery outside the 
eastern gate, which was pointed out to us as that of Gorgias, the soldier 
who, according to tradition, connived at Paul's escape, and was martyred 
for it. 

As we rode through the long street to our hotel, we saw the people 
busy in bazaars which looked light and airy. They were selling fruit 
and vegetables, making clothes, and a large quantity of baskets. The 
people were everywhere civil to us. We should have looked for this 
civility as belonging to the manners of a capital city, but that the 
Mohammedans of Damascus have a character for savage and cruel 
bigotry, which certainly seems justified by their occasional persecutions 
of the Jews; — persecutions unequaled in barbarity in our times. On 
arriving at the Italian hotel, w^e met two of our Desert comrades ; and 
one of them kindly gave up his apartment to Mrs. Y. and me, as he 
was to depart the next day. This Italian hotel has been much vaunted 
by some visitors to Damascus; and it was ludicrous to read on the spot 
the descriptions with which English readers have been supplied of the 
court-yard and apartments of this hotel. As for the court yard, we saw 
no inlaid marbles, mosaic pavements, jets of murmuring fountains, gold 
fish, and fragrant orange trees; but instead of these, we found rude 
stone pavements, plaster walls daubed with red and blue : a deewan 
somewhat repulsive in aspect, and two or three fig-trees, and some 
pinks coming into fiower about the tank. As for the apartments, that 
which was in kindness given up to us in exchange for a worse, was so 
perilously damp, and infested with beetles, that we refused to sleep in 
it a second night: and five snails were found in their slime under one 
of the beds. It is not right in travelers to romance about such houses 
as these, whether they be in the East or elsewhere: for future comers 
suffer by the complacency or indolence of the proprietor, thus induced. 
By remonstrance, we obtained better chambers: but the table is not to 
be praised : and there is no reason why it should not be good in a 
place so amply supplied with provisions as Damascus. 

We saw more of the bazaars at Damascus than in any other city of 
our travels; the whole party having to make purchases for friends at 



492 



EASTERN LIFE. 



home. The goldsmiths' bazaar was one of the most interesting ; — not 
from the quality of the jewelry, but from the picturesque figures of 
the workers, bending their turbaned heads over the blow-pipes, in their 
little dim shops. — The alleys where galloon weaving and silk-chain 
making, and the manufacture of slippers, were carried on, were very 
attractive, from the number of children employed. The little boys, 
weaving and shoemaking, were extremely industrious. They appeared 
to put their "Arab intensity" into their work, young as they were. 
Sometimes, in curious contrast, a dealer of graver years would be seen 
fast asleep in the next shop, his head laid back on a comfortable pillow 
of goods, and his whole stock open to the attacks of anyone who chose 
to steal. — The prettiest sight in connection with the bazaars was when 
a net was drawn over the front of the shop, to indicate that the owner 
was at prayers. Of course, theft would be perfectly easy during such 
an interval: but we were assured that it never happens : and purchasers 
wait, without any repining, for the re-appearance of the pious trades- 
man. 

I was altogether disappointed in the silk goods of Damascus. I saw 
very few articles that I thought pretty, more or less, though the fabric 
was substantial enough. There was a vulgarity about the patterns, — 
especially about those which w^ere the most cosdy, — which perplexed 
me till I learned the secret. The famous old Damascus patterns, the 
inheritance of centuries, and of which every Damascene is proud, have 
been imitated by our Manchester manufacturers, so as to become quite 
familiar to English eyes. The effect of this in Damascus is curious. 
The inhabitants import our cotton goods largely: and when they see 
their own patterns again, the gentlemen think they look as well as their 
own heavy silks ; and they make their wives wear them in stead, — 
greatly to the discontent of the ladies. The saving to the Damascene 
husbands is very great; as indeed it must be, if we consider the cost of 
dressing a dozen women in one house, — wives and handmaids, — in 
such costly articles as the heavy silks of Damascus.- — For my own part, 
I would rather wear Manchester cottons. The dresses of Damascus silk 
have no variety, and the scarves are stiff and cumbrous. — Perfumes are 
sold, very largely. Some of our party bought attar-of-roses and a decoc- 
tion of sandal-wood, which, however, presently lost its scent. — The 
gentlemen looked at daggers and scimitars : but the blades of Damascus 
are not what they were ; and I believe there was nothing very noticeable 
about these arms. 

By the kindness of a resident who, as a physician, has freer access 
to families than any other gentleman could obtain, we saw the interiors 
of several handsome houses. They were truly beautiful, — with their 
marble courts, fountains, thickets of orange plants and other shrubs, and 
their lofty, cool, luxurious apartments. — In the house of a wealthy 
Christian gentleman, we saw several ladies, some Jewesses being on a 
visit at the same time. The dress of these Jewesses was superb. In 
addition to the colored muslins, gold embroidery and handsome shawls 
round the waist, which all the ladies had, these Jewesses wore a pro- 
fusion of diamonds. Their heads were entirely covered with natural 



DAMASCUS AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



493 



flowers and clusters of diamonds, inserted in a close-fitting silk net. 
The painting of the eyes is somewhat deforming, as unnatural arts 
always are : but it is less hideous than the painting of the eyebrows. 
By association of ideas, a junction of the eyebrows gives to us an im- 
pression of intense thought: and nothing can be more disagreeably 
absurd than to see this artificial thoughtful frown on the excessively 
silly and inane face of an Eastern woman. They pull out the hair of 
their eyebrows, and paint a dark stripe straight across. — Their health 
is bad, of course, as they have no exercise but shuffling over their mar- 
ble pavements in splendid pattens. Their English physician has car- 
ried one important point in inducing some families to go annually for 
change to distant villages, where before they never went but on occa- 
sions of serious illness. 

In one house that we visited, the eldest daughter, always jovial, and 
now not the less so for having been recently divorced, sat down beside 
me, and laughed with the delight of having visitors. She examined 
ray clothes, stroking me and nodding; but fixed at last upon my gloves. 
After trying long and in vain to put them upon her enormous hands, 
she took my hands, to stroke them and laugh at the nails. She wanted 
me to admire hers, which were all dyed black ; but they were too much 
as if they had all been pinched in the door. How all sympathy and 
sorrow about this lady's divorce evaporated during such intercourse, I 
need not say. — We saw several times the celebrated Esther, the Jew- 
ess, and her lover ; — the pair who are ever anxiously supposing that 
our House of Lords is occupied in granting the lady a divorce from her 
insane husband. Esther's case is really a hard one. While she sees 
divorces going on all round her, whenever desired, she cannot be set 
free from her insane husband, because she happens to be a British sub- 
ject. Some kind-hearted but injudicious English travelers, who were 
really interested in Esther's case, led her to expect a decree of divorce 
from England ; and she and her lover, who would not interest us on 
any other account whatever, are constantly in expectation of being able 
to marry. Esther has been written of as the beautiful Jewess of Da- 
mascus. I suppose she would generally be considered handsome ; but 
I saw several faces which pleased me more. 

The British Vice-Consul invited us to dinner; and gave us a specta- 
cle which we shall long remember. He invited the Jewish ladies I 
have mentioned, and some others ; and several native Christian ladies, 
whose dress and manners are, for the most part, like those of their Mo- 
hammedan neighbors, except that they are not shut up in the hareem. 
The native wife of the French Consul was also there ; and the gentle- 
man and lady of the American Mission ; and many besides. — The Vice- 
CoRSul and the physician I have mentioned live together ; and they 
have one of the best houses in Damascus : and therefore, one of the 
most beautiful, for its size, in the world. At dinner, there were four 
guests besides our own party. The table was covered, very elegantly, 
with flowers and the dessert; and the dinner was handed round. A 
band of Turkish musicians was in one corner of the apartment : but 
they played so excessively loud that they were presently sent to amuse 



494 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the native ladies, who were arriving, and awaiting us in the alcove of 
the court. 

Our hosts had promised that we should see the celebrated, sword- 
dance performed by their guests; and this was the great object of the 
evening, though it was no small advantage to see a party of Damascene 
gentry assembled in this manner. When we adjourned from the din- 
ing room to the alcove, we found the deewans occupied by long rows 
of ladies, dressed in the extraordinary style of which our gentlemen 
friends had seen less than we had. Some gentlemen who are not easily 
disconcerted, looked very awkward and shy when seated in a long row, 
on chairs and stools, immediately opposite the array of eastern belles. 
These ladies whispered to each other, laughed and looked about them. 
Esther and her lover giggled and flirted in a corner. The American 
lady went about with cheerful courtesy from one to another : and our 
hosts were everywhere. Still, all was so dull that I began anxiously 
to hope for the sword-dance. Time went on, and we heard nothing of 
it. A tray was brought, and set down in the middle of the alcove, 
with cucumbers, fruits, wine and arrack, — excessively strong. Some 
of the ladies took up each a cucumber, and ate it, rind and all, swal- 
lowing after it some arrack, to promote its digestion. I am assured 
that ladies will sometimes eat three cucumbers in succession, in this 
way, with a glass of arrack to each. — A pause followed, broken only 
by a gust of wind which blew out some of the candles, and brought a 
few drops of rain, which sent us into the house. Then I supposed we 
were to have the sword-dance : but one of my companions told me 
privately that it was not to take place, and advised me to ask no expla- 
nation at present. 

In the fine apartment we had entered, there was a repetition of the 
scene in the alcove : — music, whispering and giggling ; cucumbers and 
arrack: — there were also excellent coffee and ice creams for us Euro- 
peans. In about another hour, the native ladies left their seats, 
crowded together, drew their veils about them, and departed : and we 
went away with the last of them. — When we reached home, I found 
there had been a scene behind the curtain, and that it was very well 
that the evening had passed off so quietly as it did. ' As far as we 
could understand the matter, — but it was never quite clear to us, — the 
case was this. During the dreadful persecution of the Jews at Damas- 
cus, a few years since, the French Consul was believed to have been 
their enemy, and to have aggravated their sufferings. When the Jew- 
ish ladies found his lady this evening at the Consul's, they and their 
Christian friends were hurrying away again, in great wrath, when our 
host the physician went to them, and remonstrated, telling them what 
a fatal insult their departure in this manner would be to their host, the 
Vice-Consul. On this representation they consented to stay, but stipu- 
lated that they should not be asked to dance, or amuse |Jiemselves in 
any way. — The part of the story which we could not understand was 
why these women fell into such wrath against the French Consul's 
lady this particular evening, when we had seen them meet in a morn- 



PERSECUTION. 



495 



ing visit without any demonstration of ill-will. There must be more 
in the matter than we comprehended, no doubt. 

As for the persecution to which this story relates — there is no part 
of the world — or of the civilized world, at least — where the traveler 
can go, without coming upon the traces of religious persecution. He 
finds it in Massachusetts and in England ; in Germany and Egypt ; at 
Jerusalem and at Damascus. Nowhere can men leave other men free 
in regard to matters of Opinion. In countries like ours, where the 
laws forbid aggression on life, property and outward liberty, on ac- 
count of matters of Opinion, it is common to say that there is no per- 
secution : but it is no more possible in England and Germany than it 
ever was in Spain or Italy, for men to hold the diversity of opinions 
which men were made to hold without being the worse for it, in repu- 
tation and peace of mind, if not in liberty and property. I am not 
speaking of this now as a matter of censure, but as a curious matter of 
fact. There could not be so universal a tendency to intolerance with- 
out some overwhelming reason for it : — some cause deep-seated in hu- 
man nature, or stringently operative in human circumstances. Be- 
sides the causes which lie deep in human nature — the need of sympa- 
thy, the love of repose upon convictions, the pride which is usually 
more or less implicated in our judgments, and the partial view which 
men inevitably take of every subject upon which their minds are not 
in suspense; — besides all these causes of dislike to adverse opinions, 
there is almost universally prevalent, an idea of danger, spiritual dan- 
ger, incurred by the holding of any opinions but those which the par- 
ties respectively believe to be right. It is only a man here and there 
who knows, and acts upon the knowledge, that the greatest safety in 
the universe is in truth ; and that the most direct path to safety is in 
the pursuit of truth. And perhaps it is even more rare still to meet 
with one who sees that all genuine faith is — other circumstances being 
the same— of about equal value. The value is in the act of faith, more 
than in the object; as is shown by the glorious men who have lived 
under every system of religious faith, and the bad men who have 
flourished equally under the worst and under what we are accustomed 
to consider the best. Of course, it is of very high importance that the 
objects of faith should be the loftiest and the purest that, in any par- 
ticular age, can be attained. A noble-minded man cannot take up with 
a low superstition when a higher system of faith is open to him : or he 
will suffer spiritually if he does: but he may be as noble in the tho- 
rough devotion of his faculties to the highest abstraction of his time as 
a successor may be under a higher abstraction of a later time. His 
need and his prerogative are to exercise his highest faculties in faith 
and obedience, and to gratify the best part of his nature by the con- 
templation and attainment of "the beauty of holiness," whatever be 
the names which he and others give to the Ideas which are the guid- 
ing stars of Kis life. An Egyptian of 5000 years ago might attain as 
lofty a moral state by living in obedience to that highest conception to 
which he gave the name of Amun or Osiris, as a Jew of similar nature 
and powers who devoted himself to the same loftiest ideas under the 



496 



EASTERN LIFE. 



name of Jehovah. And thus again, a Jew who was of too lofty a mind 
to live in a spirit of fear towards the " Jealous God" of whom his 
lower brethren conceived, might, in his spirit of faith and obedience, 
penetrate through the apparatus of sacrifices and a preceptive law, to 
as clear a view, and as hearty an allegiance to the Father of all men, 
as a Christian could reach in a subsequent age. The polytheism of 
Egypt was a low state of religion for the mass of men ; but it did not, 
and could not, preclude the spiritual elevation of individuals. The 
Mosaic Law and ritual were a low stage for the bulk of the Jewish 
people, in comparison with what has existed since ; but it did not pre- 
clude the utmost spiritual loftiness of individual men. The Christian 
religion, corrupted as it has been, has resembled but too much a my- 
thology of which Judaism would have been ashamed, and has fallen 
short of its purpose accordingly, in its operation on the masses of men ; 
but no one will deny that there have been men belonging to the Church 
in its darkest times whom the purest times of Christianity might have 
owned. And so on, through all the faiths of mankind. The case be- 
ing so, men afflict themselves needlessly about one another's safety, as 
regards points of spiritual belief. We may and must wish, for the 
sake of men at large, that mankind should conceive of God as a Fa- 
ther, rather than as a King ; as just and merciful, rather than as jealous 
and vindictive : but it is not for us to mistrust any human brother, or 
suppose that his best powers may not work out his highest good with- 
out his ideas being exactly correspondent with our own. Instead of 
this trust, however — a trust which faith, love, and humility alike re- 
quire — we assume that a belief which differs from our own must bring 
forth bad results, be the qualities of the holder what they may : and 
then we naturally proceed the one step further, and conclude that those 
bad results have been brought forth. The Jew would think Socrates 
an idolater ; as the Athenians believed him, in the worst meaning of 
the term, an atheist. The Christian cannot make out the Jew to be 
either idolater or atheist; but he imputes to him a constant active hatred 
to Jesus, because he still looks for the Messiah to come. The Mo- 
hammedan, judging of Christianity by what he sees in the Greek and 
Latin churches, regards all Christians as idolaters on the one hand, and 
infidels on the other. He holds with a well-grounded zeal to the mo- 
notheism which he sees to be lost from the Christianity that is before 
his eyes ; and to the spiritualism of his faith, which excludes a priest- 
hood ; and by that exclusion, maintains its vital power. The hatred 
with which he regards the Christian is as virulent as might be ex- 
pected from his imputing to him at once both kinds of error — idolatry 
in worshiping three gods and a multitude of saints, and infidelity in 
denying the greatest and chief Prophet of God. " These damned 
Christian infidels" is the description of all of us who go to the East, 
from the Bishop of Jerusalem to the cabin-boy of a ship. As imputa- 
tion follows prejudice in a natural course, the Jew believes that the 
Sun-worshipers of the Lebanon revel in obscene rites, and are in alli- 
ance with devils : — the Christian believes that the Jews crucify a child 
every Passion-week : and the Mohammedan believes that the Christian 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 



497 



wantonly sports with damnation by reviling the Prophet, and rebels 
against God by upholding the doctrine of free-will — being thus twice 
over an outcast through infidelity. There was something painful, yet 
salutary, in witnessing in the East these mere exaggerations of our own 
ways of regarding one another at home. When we witnessed the 
vindictive wrath of the Jews against their usurping and tyrannical 
neighbors — and when our monk-guide at Nazareth told us, in all ear- 
nestness, that the Jews had crucified a child in the Holy Week just 
passed — and when we were insulted and reviled by the Faithful, and 
were in the very places where they lately tortured the Jews with tor- 
ments too horrible to be written down, I took the lesson home, and 
devoutly resolved upon two things: — never to hold back from declar- 
ing what I believe to be the truth; and never to assume as facts the 
worst results which may proceed from what I believe to be error. 
While w^e see so many men who fall below the quality of their pro- 
fessed faith, and, happily, so many also who rise far above it, it is 
surely wisest, in the first place, to judge men as little as possible, and, 
in the next, to judge of them, where we must, by their individual pow- 
ers and qualities, and not by the philosophy of the faith they hold. 
This is only saying, in other w^ords, that we are to know men by their 
fruits: but, long as this mode of judgment has been commended to 
mankind, we seem to need to be reminded of it as much as ever ; as 
much perhaps in our English homes and associations as the Christians 
at Nazareth, and the Mohammedans at Damascus, who punish the 
Jews, not for anything they have actually done, but for what a hostile 
imagination and a logical course of reasoning indicate that they might 
have done. 

The subordination of Christianity to Mohammedanism in the East 
is a curious spectacle, from its novelty, to travelers from a Christian 
country. It is impossible to quarrel with the fact on the spot; not 
only because it is obviously absurd to quarrel with a fact of such mag- 
nitude and import, but because it is plain to every unprejudiced eye 
that the fact ought to be what it is. The Mohammedan not only 
knows that his faith includes a larger proportion of mankind than any 
other, so as to make even Christendom look insignificant beside it, but 
he reasonably regards Mohammedanism as the reformed faith which 
raises men above any elevation they could reach by Christianity. See- 
ing Christianity as he sees it, chiefly in the Greek church, this belief 
is reasonable. He may well think it a great advance upon the religion 
of the Greek church for men to worship One God ; a God really and 
truly One, without subterfuge, or those metaphysical multiplications 
which he knows to have constituted the idolatry of the East. He may 
well think it a great advance upon the worship of the Greek church to 
have no priesthood intruding between God and his Maker. He feels 
himself to be irrefragably right in his solution of the great difficulty 
which lies at the bottom of afl theological diff'erences, — or rather in his 
conclusion about the Existence of Evil ; — for solution there is none: 
nor is there any indication that there ever can be. The Predestina- 
rian doctrine of the Mohammedan is the strong point of his religion, as 
32 



498 



EASTERN LIFE. 



the necessarily imperfect adoption of the Free-will doctrine of the 
modern Christian church is its weak point. AYith all this strength on 
the side of Mohammedanism, in contrast with the abased condition of 
Christianity in the East, it can be no wonder that the more modern 
faith prevails immeasurably in proportion to the more ancient and vilely- 
corrupted belief. Even to us of the western world, who must neces- 
sarily be insensible to its affinities with Eastern thought, and suitability 
to Eastern habits of feeling and of life, there is abundant reason appa- 
rent why Mohammedanism should have spread and taken root as 
widely and deeply as it has done. And to us of the western world it 
raust be clearer than to the people of the East, why Mohammedanism 
cannot always endure, however Ions' it may yet serve the needs of its 
believers. 

The fatal imperfection of Mohammedanism appears to be its sup- 
posing Law, made known by precept, to be as positive, that is, as fully 
revealed, in Morals as in physical Nature. In Mohammedanism, there 
is not the slightest conception of a religion of Principles. Fact and 
positive precept are all that ^Mohammedanism contemplates; and these 
are not enough for a religion which is to endure. The Prophet was 
honest and sound-minded in excluding miracles from his scheme. 
Marvels are too familiar in the East, too natural in their occurrence, to 
be needed as an evidence there ; and the Prophet was as well aware 
as we are that even if they were an evidence of physical power of a 
preternatural order, they could not possibly be an evidence of truth of 
doctrine. The powers attributed to devils and false prophets has 
always decided this matter in the East. And ^Mohammed was honest 
and sound-minded in rejecting a priesthood, or any other intervention 
between men and God. This strongr point he probably took from 
Christianity; — the ^lohammedan traditions of Christianity relating to 
a time prior to the fatal institution of a priesthood. But Mohammed 
w^as no philosopher, any more than he was an impostor. He had the 
strongest and most definite notions of the duty and wisdom of absolute 
obedience to the immutable ^Yill of God : but he had no idea of that 
will being communicated in any other way than by a collection of 
precepts, and by the unraistakeable language of events. Of the govern- 
ing power of Principles, he never formed any conception. He never 
recognized them at all as guiding and governing powers ; — as that voice 
of God which Christianity assumes them to be. It may be true that 
"Arab intensity," — the passionate nature of the Orientals which makes 
them in so far children, — necessitated the offer of a preceptive religion : 
as the similar temperament of the Hebrews had before done in their 
case : but a religion appropriate to children can never be permanent and 
universal. It may last very long and spread very widely slill, — 
wherever, and as long as, there are tribes of a childish cast or habit of 
mind in Asia and Africa: but it cannot serve the purposes of the whole 
race: and herein lies the inestimable superiority of Christianity; — of 
the Christianity of Jesus himself. The whole purpose and scope of 
his teaching were to imbue men with the spirit of faith and morals; to 
detach them from forms and preceptive guidance, and introduce them 



MOHAMMEDANISM. 



to the prerogative of their own reason, conscience, faith and affections. 
While Mohammedanism appealed but partially to the strength of the 
human soul, — to its courage, patience, and obedience, (being lax to its 
indolence, both intellectual and spiritual,) Christianity appealed to all 
its powers, and put it in its own charge, — setting all things, in earth 
and heaven, within its reach, on condition of the exertion of all its 
powers. Mohammed gave endless instructions to men what to do. 
But He who so well knew what was in man, knew that men can do 
anything that they see: and Christianity, therefore, gives the light, in- 
stead of offering a hand to guide men through the dark. It gives the 
light, calling upon men to find, train, and exercise their powers of 
sight. 

Most miserably, however, has Christianity surrendered this life-giving 
influence here in the presence of Mohammedanism. We went to visit 
the Greek Patriarch and his chapel and new church. How much 
more Christian do the mosques look in their simplicity, than these idola- 
trous Greek churches with their profane mythological pictures, and 
their multitudinous rites and observances ! In this church we saw a 
very fine carved screen, half of which is spoiled by gilding, which is 
to extend over the whole when it is finished. The carving is very fine, 
and most elaborate : and yet the whole screen, extending completely 
across the church, costs only 120/. The Patriarch, a white-bearded 
man of seventy-eight, of the commonest aspect, was in a state of high 
delight, which he expressed with a very innocent glee, at the reception 
he had met with in his recent progress round his diocese. He told us 
that the people came out in crowds to carry him into their towns: a 
treatment very unlike that which he will ever meet with in Damascus, 
where the Mohammedans invent tortures for Jews. It is curious 
how the Predestinarians of the world have followed one another — as 
here the Mohammedans have followed the Pharisees — in punishing ad- 
verse opinion more severely than immoral conduct. Hence, no doubt, 
has arisen the bad character of the Mohammedans as spreading theij 
religion by the sword. Their Prophet did not desire or contemplate 
this, but used only reason and persuasion during the greater part of his 
course, being driven to the use of the sword at last, after a duration of 
meekness and patience quite wonderful in an Arab of the Desert. The 
charge of proselyting by violence appears to Eastern travelers as mis- 
placed in regard to the Prophet and his original faith as that of sensual- 
ism. One needs but to travel in Mohammedan countries to take a quite 
different view from the popular European one of these matters. While 
it is true, and honorably true, of Mohammedanism, that it respects, 
more than any other religion, the natural instincts of man, it is no less 
true that it ordains much asceticism, and that it has ever operated as a 
check upon sensualism, rather than as a sanction to it. There are de- 
vout ascetics, mystics, temperate men and profligates, as there are under 
all faiths, from Buddhism to Quakerism : but the operation of Moham- 
medanism is in favor of temperance — place, time and circumstances of 
its institution being considered. 

One of the most affecting sights to us in Damascus was that of the 



500 



EASTERN LIFE. 



ancient Christian cathedral converted into a mosque. We could not 
enter it, but we daily looked into it from the bazaars. Its court was 
large, light and airy, adorned with Corinthian pillars, and with squares 
of marble mosaic. What more we saw of it was by climbing up to a 
house-top by ladders, to view what remains of its grand entrance. This 
remnant of early Christian zeal looks mournful enough. The rich 
pediment and pillars — the pediment shattered, and three of the six pil- 
lars decapitated — are hidden and almost lost among sordid Arab dwell- 
ings; and the Christian is excluded from courts which were built and 
adorned by Christian hands. 

There is a place, two miles from Damascus, which is visited by 
people of all the three faiths — Jobah, declared, and reasonably, to be 
the place indicated in Genesis XIV. 15, as Hobah, whither Abraham 
went in pursuit of Lot, who had been carried away: — "unto Hobah, 
which is on the leftside of Damascus." I own that one chief interest 
of Damascus and its environs is in their undisputed antiquity. To the 
synagogue at Jobah, however, another interest pertains. It is believed 
by the Jews that the Law was preserved here when Titus besieged 
Jerusalem ; and there are now thirty-six copies of the Law there which 
are considered very valuable. On the floor of this synagogue is shown 
a space railed in, to commemorate a deed which we should all be glad 
to forget — whether it be fact or mere imputation.* The spot is said 
(but no one believes it) to be that where Elisha anointed Haziel King 
of Syria. We were next taken down, by four or five steps, to a very 
small grotto, where, as we were assured, Elijah was fed by ravens — 
there having once been a window through which the birds could reach 
him. 

The house of Naaman is shown: but our friends advised us not to 
go. It is converted into a Christian Leper Hospital ; and there is more 
useless pain in visiting it than the occasion is worth. Dr. T., the 
physician, told me that the lepers are chiefly scrofulous subjects ; and 
that damp and poor diet are the great disposing causes of leprosy. The 
disease is not found to be contagious, no instances being known of its 
affecting those who dress the sores of the patients. In the young, in- 
cipient leprosy may often be combated: but for adults, nothing can be 
done beyond alleviation. They sufTer much and long, usually dying 
of tubercular or related diseases, at last. It certainly appears, however, 
that this is one of the diseases destined to die out under the spread of 
civilization. 

In the course of our rides, we were repeatedly conducted by our 
hospitable friends to the Cafes in the environs, w^hich are so celebrated 
wherever Damascus is heard of. How astonished our families at home 
would have been to see us in a magic glass at such seasons of refresh- 
ment! They would have seen us sitting under a trellise of vines, or 
round a reservoir, with a row of nargeelehs before us, and coffee and 
ices at hand ; — a brook, containing the waters of the old Pharpar, 
flowing into the garden, among plots of vegetables and thickets of/ruit 



* 2 Kings VIII. 7—15. 



DAMASCUS. 



501 



trees, whose boughs were bending and cracking with the weight of 
their produce. Twigs of a plum-tree, thickly studded with green 
fruit, were offered to us, to carry away ; and the stem of my chibouque 
was one day embossed with fresh-gathered roses. The Cafes within 
the city, where the people go to smoke and talk, are very inferior to 
those in the environs. They are loo much trodden, and too town-like ; 
and the wooden platforms are sordid. But all are blessed with running 
waters and the shade of trees ; and all afford exquisite pictures of 
grouped figures to the eye of the passing stranger. 

Our rides were always charming, — the green tracks winding among 
orchards and fields, coming out sometimes on a little green eminence, 
and sometimes on a meadow, or a bridge, or a reach of the river. 
The old trees, ponds, water-courses and grassy nooks were very Eng- 
lish, on the whole, but luxuriant beyond English imagination. One 
tree in the city, — a plane growing in the middle of a bazaar, — was 
measured by us, and found to be thirty-eight feet in the girth.— By 
far the finest of our rides was that which showed us the celebrated 
view of the city from above the suburb of the Salaheeyeh. We rode 
for nearly an hour through narrow streets, and past many mosques, 
before we found ourselves outside the city. Then we ascended the 
hill-side, not as high as the grottoes, but above the cemetery : and 
thence, looking back, saw a picture which appeared as if it must melt 
away in its own beauty. It is this view which makes the Mohammed- 
ans declare Damascus to be the first of their four terrestrial paradises. 
The rich yellow city, with its forty minarets, springs up from the 
midst of the glorious verdure which looks as thick as a forest for miles 
round. Verdure springs up within the city too; and a village here, a 
mosque there, and then a bridge, or a reach of road or water, peeps 
out from amidst the surrounding wood ; so that the intermingling of 
city and forest is most temping to the fancy, as well as delicious to the 
eye. Beyond the oasis lies the plain ; and beyond the yellow plain, 
the tinted hills on every side: their hues soft and repressed, as if to 
set off the brilliancy of the gem which lies in the midst. I never 
saw anything like this again ; — anything nearly so sweet and gay. 
We passed over the same spot in leaving the city ; but the morning 
light was not favorable to it: and it was not like the same scene. 

Among the mosques which we visited in the course of this ride, was 
one which might have been, as we saw it, a painter's dream. Two 
soldiers were lounging in the weedy gateway. In the long grass with- 
in lay the sculptured ornaments of the dismantled chamber. A broken 
reservoir was in the midst, its waters brimming over the sides into the 
grass; and a soft green light was cast over it by the pendulous, leafy 
fig-tree above. A shattered column lay at hand, moist and garlanded 
with ferns. 

Very unlike this was the Mosque of the Derweeshes, which we 
next visited. It must once have been handsome ; but it has now all 
the sordidness of decay, without any of the grace of desertion. The 
lead is stripped off its many cupolas by the weather ; and the colors 
are stained on the walls : but the surrounding buildings are made into 



502 



EASTERN LIFE. 



a shabby sort of stables, in which live eleven Derweeshes. They 
drone and beg, and say prayers, and live in the style of our cattle. 
They cut up the courts with mean wooden palings, within which 
beans were growing in the undrained plots which are like ponds after 
rain. 

The entrances to the city through the deep arches of the bazaars 
are very fine, when the shops are closed, — as they were this day. We 
paused within the shadow and quietness, and looked out upon the gay 
and busy life afar, and the minarets, — one cased with green tiles, and 
others yellow and white, — glittering in the sun. — During the eight days 
of our abode at Damascus, how many such pictures we saw ! and how 
clear it was that such would daily delight the eye, if we were to pass 
there a lifetime of eighty years ! Dr. T. likes living at Damascus, and 
encourages his countrymen to invest money in mulberry plantations in 
Syria, and establish their families there. Few will be tempted to do 
so, at the cost of forfeiting the privileges of law and government ; — 
of living in entire dependence on the protection of the Consul, whose 
own position is always a precarious one. I would not live in Syria, 
on any inducement whatever: but that English persons do live there, 
and like it, proves what the charm must be of the beauty of the coun- 
try and its cities : for there is really nothing else : — neither law nor 
government, nor society, nor a healthy climate. — A physician is, as he 
ought to be, a privileged person everywhere: but there is little encou- 
ragement to any other vocation: for the richest procee'ds of mulberry- 
growing may be swept away at any moment by political or social 
change. There is bodily luxury, — as much as can be enjoyed without 
health : and there is a perpetual feast of beauty to the eye. This 
is, T believe, all, except for those who go for patriotic or benevolent 
objects. Such objects, of course, create an all-sufficient happiness at 
Damascus, as everywhere else. 



CHAPTER II. 

AIN FUJI— ZEBDANY.—BAALBFX.— THE BEKAA. 

On our way out of Damascus, we passed the great military Hospital 
begun by Ibraheem Pasha, when he was master of the country. The 
works were stopped when he retired ; and now the stones are taken, one 
by one, from the unfinished walls, by any persons who find it convenient 
to use them. From place to place in Palestine and Syria, we came 
upon the deserted works of Ibraheem Pasha: and everywhere we found 
the people lamenting the substitution of Turkish for Egyptian rule. 
The Turks, it is true, like the lightness of their present taxation, which 
is pretty much what it pleases them to make it: and everybody knows 
that the rulers of Egypt impose high taxes: but the religious toleration 
which existed under Ibraheem Pasha, and his many public works, cause 
him to be fervently regretted ; — chiefly by the Christians, but also by 



AIN FUJI. 



503 



many others. If there is at present any government at all in the dis- 
tricts we passed through, it is difficult to discern: and of course, the 
precariousness of affairs is extreme. 

We were to spend two nights on the road between Damascus and 
Baalbec; and the first was to be at Ain Fijji, — five hours and a half 
from Damascus. — We followed the course of the Barrada; or rather, 
we kept its course in view, which it was easy to do, from the belt of 
verdure which fringed its channel. In contrast with the limestone hills 
around, this vegetation looked black. In the hollows of the hill-range, 
there were islands of verdure, with a minaret to each, a mill, and a few 
habitations peeping out above the wood; miniature likenesses of Da- 
mascus, and only less beautiful than it. The prettiest of these settle- 
ments was Bassena. While we looked down upon the Barrada, — the 
life of the region, without which it would be a desert, — the snowy peaks 
which shut in the valley of the Jordan rose to the south-west, and the 
mountains of the Antilibanus range, which we were now about to cross, 
seemed to enlarge every moment. 

There was, of course, a greater abundance of water as we approached 
the mountains: and, of course, the tokens of popular industry increased 
in proportion. There were fig orchards, well cleared and fenced, on 
the ridges of the nearer eminences; and plantations of mulberries and 
vines below. Wherever we fell in with a watercourse, there were 
spreading trees, good crops, bridges, mills and rows of dwellings. — It 
was rather late in the afternoon when I, who was riding first, turned 
into a recess among the hills which I thought so far more beautiful than 
any spot we had ever encamped in, that I turned back to inlreat that 
we might stop here. My companions were of my mind; but the ser- 
vants assured us that Ain Fijji, which was only half an hour off", was 
better in every respect. We agreed to go and see : and we could re- 
turn if we preferred this nook, of which I had scarcely a doubt when 
we left it. From a promontory of the mountain, a grassy level spread 
out, — little larger than would be required for our camp. The Barrada 
bounded this bit of turf, rushing in a semicircle under a fine pre- 
cipice. Nothing could be more delicious than the gush of the clear 
abundant waters under the rocks, which overhuno' the stream enough 

to cast a shadow upon it The way out of this nook was by a path 

so rugged and difficult that I suspected we should not return, however 
disappointed we might be in Ain Fijji. Nobody, however, was ever 
disappointed in Ain Fijji, or, I should think, will be, while its waters 
flow. 

As we passed by the village, the people appeared very civil : and a 
man put himself at the head of our troop, to show us where to encamp. 
He led us past a glorious old ruin, and by a descending road, where 
we heard the gush of waters from below and behind the poplars which 
made a screen on our left hand. The guide presently pulled down 
enough of an orchard wall on the right to allow the horses and laden 
mules to enter, and told us we might encamp in the orchard. — From 
our platform we overlooked the junction of the Barrada and Fijji be- 
low ; and we dined under leafy walnut and fig-trees, with blossoming 



504 



EASTERN LIFE. 



pomegranates pushing in "between, and the gush of waters for our 
music. A group of very handsome and well-behaved women and chil- 
dren stood looking at us, offering now and then some friendly attention. 
High mountains encompassed the whole scene, and the sunset light 
upon the eastern summits was gorgeous. The waters of the Barrada 
had some of the whitish sulphureous tinge which is seen in the Jordan; 
while the stream from Ain Fijji was almost as blue as the sky. The 
currents flowed along, side by side, without mingling at all, for some 
way from their junction. 

I knew that one might trace the whole course of the Fijji without 
any great exertion. It is, in fact, called the shortest river in the world, 
being only one hundred ysnds in length. Yet it is an abundant river 
for that space. The natives, being unwilling to beheve that this can 
be all of it, declare it to come under ground from the Euphrates. — I 
went, however, to see for myself all that is really known about it. 
Never did I visit such a spring. It bursts, an abundant river, from 
cavernous rocks, faced with stone, and graced by a temple to the 
Nymphs, w^hich crowns the precipice. I got down, by the help of de- 
tached blocks and the roots of trees, and peeped into the caverns where 
the waters were weUing up in the deep shadow, and rushing out to the 
light. There were hewn stones lying in the river, and remains of a 
cornice upon the face of rock. Above these were, as I now saw, two 
temples of massive structure. The lower one had been vauhed, with 
an arched portal opening to the river. Never was heathen temple more 
exquisitely placed. A tall fig tree, and a group of young poplars were 
now growing up within the walls : and it was all shrouded in groves, 
so that it could hardly be seen except from below, while it commanded 
the rushing stream, and was lighted by glancing reflections from its 
waters. A villager came to me, and showed me by intelligible signs, 
everything I could wish to know ; and he said nothing about baksheesh. 
As I returned to the camp, I met in succession several women, leading 
their flocks of goats and kids ; and men with asses laden with wood ; 
one of them spinning with the iiistafF. They all gave me civil and 
cheerful greetings. We seemed to have got into a little paradise of good 
manners, as well as beauty. 

In this sense of security, I crossed the river, the next morning, while 
our people were breaking up the camp, and followed a hill-path to a con- 
siderable height, whence 1 could overlook the whole basin, with its 
w^oods and hidden waters. I was surprised to see how high up the 
hills vegetation was carried, — there being olive-groves, and even mul- 
berries on ledges of the mountain where I could hardly have supposed 
they would grow. When I afterwards saw the western side of Leba- 
non, I found how much higher still men will climb and fix their dwell- 
ings, when they obtain a return for their pains. When seeing such 
things, in a country where property is eminently precarious, it is strange 
and painful to think of the Irish, lounging and languishing beside 
seas full of fish, and wide spaces of uncultivated land. If the}'" were 
set down, as these people are, empty-handed among the rocky slopes 
of Antilibanus, with nobody to look to for protection or aid, what would 



AIN FUJI. 



505 



they do ? Would they lie down and die ? or would they, like these 
people, build themselves houses of stone or mud, and make coarse and 
rude tools of the wood and stone of the mountain, and prepare terraces 
on the bare uplands, and grow fruit and mulberry leaves for barter, and 
grain for their own food ? And what would not these Syrian peasants 
say of their good fortune, if they had at hand bays of the sea swarm- 
ing with fish, and large tracts of soil wanting nothing but labor to make 
it fruitful ? It was strange and painful to think of these things: but yet 
there was some encouragement, too. When I saw what could be done 
by a willing and laborious peasantry in such a district as this, it seemed 
impossible that Ireland should not easily support her people when a 
new generation sets to work in earnest, like the inhabitants of these 
Syrian mountains. As we rode away from Ain Fijji, the people 
about the camp attended us till we were fairly off on the road, and then 
offered us a blessing such as Christians rarel}?" meet with from Moham- 
medans. They cried after us, "God be with you !" 

The bridge of El Souk, two hours from Ain Fijji, is in a beautiful 
pass, where the rocks approach so as to leave only a strip of green on 
either side of the Barrada. These rocks have not only holes, supposed 
to be sepulchral, but tablets or panels which, though uninscribed, tell a 
curious tale. Their presence here is a mystery. The little bridge 
lightly spans an emerald-green fall of the river ; and the tufts of shrubs 
along the grassy banks of the stream are beautiful. A conduit is cut 
in the rocks; and it crosses the stream with the bridge. A local tra- 
dition declares this conduit to have been made by a woman: and the 
learned of course suggest that this woman may have been Zenobia. 

We followed the Barrada to a beautiful waterfall, among the shrubs 
to the left of our track ; and then we withdrew^a little, crossing a long 
stretch of table land, and seeing the quiet and now lessening stream 
through all its windings up to Zebdany, near which it takes its rise. 

Zebdany is halfway between Damascus and Baalbec: but for three 
miles before reaching it, it was difficult to believe we were not in Eng- 
land. I thought at least that this must be one of the districts Vv'here 
English capital, managed by English agents, is invested: but I could 
not learn that it was so, — such scenes of British enterprise lying fur- 
ther to the north. We entered upon lanes ; — home-like lanes, with 
ditches on either side, and hedges of blackthorn, elder, sycamore, 
brambles, hawthorn, nearly out, and briar roses. The gates were like 
ours : everything was like home (for the lanes were even muddy) ex- 
cept that there were vines and mulberries in the fields, where with us 
there would have been apples and hops. There was nothing tempting 
in the village. As in duty bound, we inquired, as ordered by preced- 
ing travelers, for Adam's tomb: and the people took us to the ceme- 
tery ! We climbed to the upper story of a house, to see some Syrian 
silkworms. They were in trays : very small as yet ; and as disagreea- 
ble as they are everywhere else, — Our tents had gone forward mean- 
time : we rode after them, over hill-tracks, for three hours more, pass- 
ing a village where the houses were built of loose stones, and no longer 
of mud; and at length saw our tents pitched in a beautiful dell, beside 



506 



EASTERN LIFE. 



a lively stream. There were few or no people near but goatherds 
tending their immense flocks upon the hills. 

We were now only a few hours distant from Baalbec, and on the 
next evening (May 5th), we were to rest under the wails of the great 
Temple of the Sun. The first few miles of our ride in the morning 
were charming, — winding beside the streams, and over grassy levels, 
and across fallow fields, tiJl we entered upon a barer region of lim.estone 
hills,— the outer skirls of the Antilibanus range. — I believe travelers 
usually approach Baalbec from the south, by the Bekaa : and some 
say that that is the most imposing approach. We reached it by a lateral 
pass, from the southeast, looking down upon it from a considerable dis- 
tance. Travelers always stand up for their own way of first approach- 
ing a great object, — knowing that to be very fine, and knowing no 
other: and I might say that, from what I saw of the aspect of Baalbec, 
the second day, from the Bekaa, I should think the descent upon it 
better, for a first view, than an approach on the same level. But there 
is no saying, as we can have but one first impression ; and I will only 
declare that we were quite satisfied with our first view of Baalbec. 

The Bekaa is the Valley, sometimes called Hollow Syria, lying be- 
tween the Antilibanus range and the loftier Lebanon. It is watered by 
the Lietani river, — believed to be the ancient Leontes, which rises a 
little above Baalbec, and flows in a nearly straight course, till it reaches 
the Mediterranean above the ancient Tyre. It was by this Hollow Way 
that the ancient armies used to march, whose expeditions so largely 
affected the fate of the Hebrews throughout their residence in Pales- 
tine. The Syrians were wont to march down this valley to their sieges 
of Samaria; and it was by this way that the Egyptians, landing at 
Tyre, came up against Damascus. This conspicuous and much fre- 
quented valley was a fitting place for the great Temple of the Sun ; — 
both for the honor of the god, and for the convenience of native and 
foreign worshipers. The edifices of Baalbec are situated on one side 
of the valley, which is here about seven miles wide. The}^ stand in- 
deed near the base of the eastern mountains. 

We had seen the Bekaa at intervals during the morning, when the 
hills on our left opened enough to disclose what was behind them. 
The aspect of the eastern declivities of Lebanon, on the other side of 
the valley, was very remarkable. The summits were streaked with 
snow ; below which the heights were of the usual mountain coloring 
of gray, purple and green. Below, their skirts were too variegated 
and gaudy for beauty, the slopes being white,^-' shaded into scarlet and 
crimson, which ran into the softer tints above. The Bekaa looked dim 
and uniform, and as if it must be as sultry as the plain of the Jordan in 
summer. — We turned to the left at last, down upon the Bekaa, and 
came upon a sudden view of Baalbec below us, — its six gigantic co- 
lumns standing up above the great mass of ruins. The trees were few 
and scattered, instead of being like the woods we had seen investing 
all the towns, from Damascus onwards. 

• From wlience the name is derived, — Lebanon signifying White. 



BAALBEC. 



507 



Before going to our tents, which were pitched beside the Temple of 
the Sun, we turned a httle southwards, to the quarries, whence the 
stone was drawn for these mighty edifices. The whole area of these 
quarries is very large and striking; but the great marvel of the place 
is the unremoved block, whose bulk exceeds that of any stones we 
saw in Egypt: and I believe, that of any other known block in the 
world. According to Pococke, this stone measures sixty-eight feet in 
length, nearly eighteen feet in width, and nearly fourteen in thickness. 
There are stones in one of the temple walls measuring each from sixty 
to sixty-three feet in length, and of proportionate breadth and thick- 
ness : and these are built into the wall at some height from the ground. 
It has been observed, however, that the ground within is higher than 
that without; and some have supposed — under the great difficulty of 
accounting for the elevated position of such masses, that they were 
brought on rollers over high ground, deposited in their places, and the 
earth then cut away from them. But this does not appear to lessen the 
difficulty where such masses lie one upon another : for we have only 
to choose between the two impossible tasks of lowering the under 
series, and bringing the higher up hill. In truth, w^e know nothing, 
about it; and the dealings of the ancients with such masses is a thing 
quite beyond our comprehension now. 

The children about our tents were beautiful. I sat down, and col- 
lected them round me, to see an orange divided, and then to eat it up; 
and it was amusing to perceive how like they were to children at home, 
— in the boldness of one, — the shyness of another, and the waggery of a 
third. While I was thinking so, a beautiful girl stood between her 
mother and me, looking from one to the other. She held by the hand 
a shy little brother who would have hidden himself and lost his bit of 
orange, if I had not kept it for him till he could be induced to come. 
His sister now, on obtaining a smile from her mother, came to me, and 
most gracefully kissed my hand. This was not like an English child. 
Whenever I have traveled abroad, I have wished that we could, in the 
training of children, cease to interfere with natural language in the 
way we do. I am aware that there is much to be said on both sides 
of this really important question ; and no one can be further than I am 
from wishing to return to those demonstrations of feeling which belong 
essentially to a state of barbarism. One would not wish to hear the 
howl at funerals in England: nor to see mourners tearing their clothes, 
or throwing dust on their heads, — any more than one would relish 
savage laughter and capering on joyful occasions. But the reason why 
one does not wish to see these barbarous signs of emotion is because 
violent emotions are themselves barbarous. The chastened emotions 
of the wise maybe left to express themselves naturally: and their 
natural expression will be simply by the countenance and the tone of 
the voice. The natural language vi^ill be subdued only because the 
emotions are: and there appears no reason for the suppression of ges- 
ture and the training of the carriage, in relation to the small occasions 
of hourly life in which express discipline is out of place. English 
children are just as animated and graceful in their infancy as any little 



508 



EASTERN LIFE. 



Arabs or Italians : but by ten years old they are subdued, if possible : 
and if they cannot be subdued, they are of course rude. In England, 
we see many a girl of ihe age of this Baalbec child, who is interesting 
from the mobile character of her countenance, in spite of her immova- 
ble attitudes. Why should she have been deprived of the freedom of 
unconsciously expressing herself by the language of gesture, during 
the years when she is too shy for the full use of speech, and before 
she has obtained adequate command of it ? The ungainly and unna- 
tural inexpressiveness of childish manners in England is one of the most 
striking and uncomfortable impressions the traveler receives, on his 
return home ; as the mobile grace of children and adults has been one 
of his daily pleasures abroad. 

Almost before Mrs. Y. and I were dressed, our tent-curtains were 
thrown open, and a train of five ladies entered. As Alee was engaged 
interpreting between the gentlemen and some visitors in their tent, our 
position was rather awkward; or rather, it would have been so, if our 
visitors had not appeared extremely happy. They stroked our gowns, 
looked merrily in our faces, and every now and then, burst into a laugh, 
as children do from mere glee. Thus we sat for some time, all looking 
as amiable as we could, till Alee arrived with coffee. These ladies were 
from Damascus, — sent hither by our friend. Dr. T., for health ; and 
they reported very favorably of the effect of the change. One of them 
was the wife of the Baalbec agent of the English consulate. The 
agent and his lady were kind to us, sending us, the next morning, a 
tray covered with butter, cheese and fresh flowers. The agent also 
guided us in a ride in the neighborhood ; after which he sent a message 
to the gentlemen by Alee, requesting them to give him a spyglass. 

After the departure of the ladies, we ran up to the great temple, for 
half-an-hour before dinner; and afterwards we took a more deliberate 
survey. I will not dwell upon what has been well described in many 
books : but I am happy to be able to say that the report which I found 
prevailing when I reached home, and saw repeated in many newspa- 
pers, of this temple being in course of destruction, that the stones might 
be used for a new q^uay, is altogether false. The date of the report 
was the same as that of our visit; and no persons were moving stones 
when we were there. Whenever they do, they will find it easier to 
help themselves from the enormous heaps that are lying about, than to 
dislodge the blocks of which the temple is built. 

The edifices are most massive, wonderful and beatiful; and some of 
our party were more impressed by them than by anything we had seen. 
Fully admitting the reasonableness of this, I recurred to the temples of 
Egypt, and felt how much stronger was the charm of their antiquity 
than that of any architectural magnificence and grace. It is true, this 
place is of unknown antiquity; but that is historically, and not visibly. 
One remembers that this was a stage in the highway from Tyre to 
India when Palmyra was a mere watering station in the Desert : but 
what one hears of is its Greek name of Heliopolis : and what one sees 
is the buildings of the Roman emperors. I am quite of Captain Man- 



BAALBEC. 



509 



gles' opinion when he says, " I think that he who has once seen Egypt, 
will never feel equally interested in any other country." 

The six enormous columns which are seen for many miles round, 
are the grandest feature of the ruins. The eagle is interesting, from 
being the true eagle of Sun-worship, — unlike the Roman, or any other 
emblematic eagle ; and, to my eye, little resembling any actual bird. It 
is not easy to obtain a good view of it, as it is in an inconvenient posi- 
tion overhead ;— and the block which contains the greater part of it has 
sunk from its place, so as to divide the figure, and to threaten to fall on 
the head of the gazer. — The great hall has a classical air; and its niches 
probably contained Roman idols. We wished the wall away which 
spoiled the corresponding recess, by being built directly across the 
area; but there was something striking in seeing within the same 
enclosure, traces of the three successive proprietorships ; — those of 
Baal-worshipers, the priests of Apollo, and the Saracens. It is impos- 
sible to give an idea how differently the worship of Baal appears among 
the ruins of his shrines and in the school-room at home. Amidst the 
contempt of idols in which we are brought up, it is a perpetual wonder 
how idols could have obtained any worshipers. Children in England, 
— and some grown children there, — lose all patience with the Hebrews 
that they could so much as turn their heads to look upon Baal and 
Astarte, and have no words for their contempt of people who, in the 
Promised Land, could " halt between two opinions." They have a 
strong impression, too, of the vulgarity of Baal, who appears a much 
nobler deity when he is found to be the same with Apollo. I must con- 
fess that 1 felt almost as much affected with the sense of the folly of all 
this prejudice, when I stood among the ruins of Baaibec, as if I had 
just come out of the school-room in which I used to take upon me, thirty 
years ago, to despise Baal, and be disgusted with his vulgarity. Of 
course, I had long been aware, when I deliberately considered the 
matter, that this w^orship, like every other, prevailed, and could prevail, 
only in virtue of the Ideas in which it originated. But there is nothing 
like being on the spot, for shaking off* prejudice, and liberating one's 
sympathies. I had found this in Egypt, when I was instructed by what 
I saw to judge of its old faith as we would have Christianity judged of 
in a future age of the world; — not by the literal outward representation 
alone, but with the remembrance that a whole world of ideas and feel- 
ings was living and moving within ; and here I received another les- 
son in' the magnificence and exquisite beauty which could have had 
no meaner origin than a spirit of reverence. In these mighty halls, 
under these lofty colonnades, there can be no doubt that hearts have 
beat, and souls have been stirred, with emotions as intense as human 
nature is capable of ; — of adoration and gratitude to the Lord of Life 
and the Light of the World. Baal was the most life-giving and benefi- 
cent of heathen deities; and he was adored accordingly. 

Nothing but earthquake could have effected such ruin as is seen here. 
All about us lay shafts and capitals; and sculptured blocks shaken out 
of the ceiling of the portico: and when we climbed a shattered staircase 
belonging to the massive Saracenic portion of the buildings, we saw 



510 



EASTERN LIFE. 



that we were surrounded by complete desolation. The light shone 
through the fissures in the temple-buildings ; and the whole area of 
Baalbec was an expanse of heaped stones, with two unfinished minarets, 
and some modern dwellings rising out of them. 

The large square called the Forum, struck us as being very beautiful. 
Here, when this city was the glory of the plain between the two Lebanon 
ranges, did the people meet ; — the merchants trading between India and 
Tyre; the Egyptians on their way to Damascus ; the soldiers from 
Rome; the artists and philosophers from Greece; the ambassadors on 
their way to Palmyra, and the priests of the temple which towered 
close at hand. The edifice in the midst has left mere traces; but the 
corner recesses of the enclosure, and the niches, with the Medusa-heads, 
the shells, and other such ornaments, tell something of the beauty which 
is gone. — The Saracenic fortress and vaults are wonderful places for 
size and solidity; but, of course, they do not constitute the interest of 
Baalbec. 

Early the next morning (May 6th), we walked to the little oratory 
in the I3ekaa, about half an hour south from the Temple. It is merely 
a small roofless building, whose unadorned cornice is supported by eight 
granite pillars. The advantage of the walk was in giving us good 
views of the plain as we went, and of the ruins as we returned. The 
road was a mere track, passing among patches of tilled ground. In 
this path I saw, on returning, an oddly-shaped small stone ; and fortu- 
nately I stooped for it,. When cleaned, it turned out to be a beautifully 
sculptured little hand, grasping a leaf. No doubt it is a fragment of 
some sculptured wreath from the temple ; — a bit of plunder dropped in 
the path by some thief. 

After breakfast, we visited the most elegant of the smaller buildings; 
the circular temple with an hexagonal cornice. Only four pillars of 
the six remain, and the edifice is crumbling away. The Greek Chris- 
tians have daubed the inside and the door-posts with their wretched 
paintings. 

We rode to Ras-el-Ain, the spring of the river of Baalbec; and on 
our way, we passed mosques,, whose arches are supported by elegant 
marble Corinthian pillars; — symbols of the Sun-god having come to do 
homage to the latest Prophet. — The place of the spring is pretty ; — a 
grassy spot, enlivened with welling waters. The yellow rose grew 
splendidly here. On our return, we once more went over the ruins, 
measuring the large stones, and completing our survey; and then 
mounted to follow our baggage train across the Bekaa. 

The land was roughly ploughed, very stony and weedy, but pro- 
ducing good crops here and there. Among the barley, I saw now a 
sarcophagus, — then a hewn stone covered with sculptures, — and, stand- 
ing up conspicuously in the wide level, the pillar called Hamoudiade. 
This mixture of elements of scenery, with the colonndes of Baalbec 
surmounting the trees behind, was strange enough: but the whole was 
further perplexed and made remarkable by a mirage in the plain, 
almost as deceptive as that in the Field of Damascus. — At the village 
of Dayr-el-Akmar, we obtained a guide, to conduct us over the Leba- 



CROSSING THE LEBANON. 



511 



non. — We had been warned that the Cedars were never accessible be- 
fore June, from the depth of the snow: but we were disposed to try to 
reach them. Instead, therefore, of following the road to Tripoli, we now 
saw that road part off' to our left; and we went more directly up the 
face of the mountains, nearly opposite Baalbec. 



CHAPTER III. 

CROSSING THE LEBANON.— THE CEDARS.— EDEN.— JOURNEY TO 
BATROUN.— LAST ENCAMPMENT. 

The passage of the Lebanon was very agreeable, — the path winding 
among woodland — (chiefly holly, with some oak) — and over a profusion 
of wild flowers, — the yellow jessamine abounding as much as any. 
We rode up steep ascents, and down to shallow valleys, so that we were 
on the whole rapidly mounting. As I was riding behind, a man offered 
me some goats' milk, which was so welcome that I paid him lavishly. 
He followed me for more money, which I would not give: and when I 
overtook my party, I found that Mr. Y. had sent him to me, having paid 
handsomely for the milk. Thus the visits of strangers are made pro- 
fitable. — The next little valley we overlooked was that in which we 
were to rest for the night; and our tents were already pitched. Its 
aspect was very Alpine, from the scantiness of its crops, the character 
of its wood, and the water-fall which came leaping down in successive 
stages, from the verge of the snows above. — I went up the hill-side, 
among the crevices where the waters took their leap, and there I bathed, 
in the coldest water I ever felt. This refreshment, and the pure air of 
the mountain, were like new life, after breathing so long in the depress- 
ing atmosphere of the plains. 

The next morning, we reached the summit of the pass in an hour 
and forty minutes. The path was zigzag, and very steep, and so little 
encumbered with snow, that there was no difficulty whatever. We 
crossed two or three patches of not more than a foot in depth: and that 
was all. We could see Baalbec the whole way, by looking back over 
the Bekaa : and I should think, by the evening light, the colonnades 
must be visible, standing above the screen of wood. To our left spread 
the little Lake Limoun, looking so calm and still, that for some time I 
supposed it to be mere mirage. The moment of turning away from 
the ridge, and losing sight of Antilibanus, was rather sad : for we felt 
that this was our true farewell to the East. We were parting from 
the Plain of Hollow Syria, and from the pass leading to Damascus ; and 
from the peaks which closed in the Valley of the Jordan; and hence- 
forth we must look only westwards. 

This first western view was extremely fine; and we were not disap- 
pointed by blinding mists, as so man}'' travelers have been who, coming 
hither with their minds full of Volney's description, have found all 
blant. There was haze over the sea: but we could distinguish the 



512 



EASTERN LIFE. 



lines of the brealcers, and presently, a fine jutting- headland, and even 
its reflection in the M^aters. The abysses of the Lebanon valleys were 
most striking, with their red and gray rocks, not lying in strata, but 
rising in perpendicular masses, supporting platforms, on which stood 
villages, with cypresses for spires. Overlapping mountains, cut asun- 
der by these abysses, succeeded one another to the coast. Between us 
and the highest terraces, — terraces which reached an incredible height, 
— stretched snowy and barren slopes. Beshirai, on an isolated plat- 
form, bristling whh cypresses, and showing lines of flat roofs, was far 
below us: and so was Eden on its hill ; — Eden which is perched so 
high, that the inhabitants live in it only during the spring and summer 
months. — A few steps further, and we saw the Cedars, — a patch of 
dark wood at the base of the slope to our right, — just below the verge 
of the snow. 

There was more snow on this than on the eastern side; and the road 
was rugged, swampy, and slippery; but I did not find it necessary to 
dismount, and reached the cedars dry shod. 

These trees have now spread, from being a mere clump, to a wood 
of considerable extent. They stand on undulating ground — on a nook 
of hill and dale which is exceedingly pretty — its grassy and mossy sur- 
face shaded by the enormous old trees, and sprinkled all over with their 
seedlings. The priest who lives on the spot pointed out to us three 
trees which are declarefl to belong to the most ancient generation, and 
which devotees would fain make out to have been growing in Solomon's 
time. There are nine more which look equally old; that is, as old as 
possible. Of these nine, one measured 38 feet 11 inches round the 
trunk, and one of the three oldest measured 30 feet. It is under this 
last that mass is performed once a year; and its trunk is carved all 
over with names. The priest told us that he had lived there, beside 
the little chapel, for twelve years, and that no accident had befallen 
any of the old trees in his time. The Christians call the trees " Saints ;" 
and when we asked how the Mohammedans regard them — knowing 
that they come hither in pilgrimage — we were told that they call them 
"god-trees." Their spread over the slopes is beautiful; and far down, 
the declivities, their roots come out so woody and thick as to look like 
prostrate trunks. One of the second generation, the nine, is so strangely 
cut that we inquired the reason, and found that an Abyssinian monk 
lived in it for many years, in all weathers; till, at last, a rude hut of 
stones was built for him, which is still standing. The priest brought 
us wnne, and gave us information very civilly. I would fain have stayed 
a day — or a week, if we could — for it is a charming spot; but it was 
thought necessary to proceed to Eden — nearly three hours further, on 
a rough and hill}?- road. 

The valley which opens about half an hour before Eden is gloriously 
beautiful. Wherever we looked there were red precipices, marvelously 
terraced, and white water-falls, and capricious green slopes, and streams 
rushing in conduits or natural channels; and groves of mulberry and 
fig, about the little villages, perched in apparently inaccessible plafes. 
Eden is a Maronite village, crowded with churches; and the flat roofs 



EDEN. 



513 



of its houses were already occupied with trays of silk worms. We 
saw it to no advantage, it being enveloped in mist this evening, and 
damp and dreary with mountain rain in the morning. We encamped 
on a stretcii of grass near a large walnut-tree, from whose old roots a 
stream leaped in a pretty water-fall. The people were very handsome, 
and we saw a good deal of them, as they gathered about us, and lost no 
opportunity of peeping into the tents. When the wind went down in 
the evening, I stole out, and sat on a wall in the shadow, to see what I 
could of this new world. The handsome women, with the becoming 
fillet on the forehead, were talking in the light of the fires; the last gust 
had parted the mists, and the depths of the gorges began to appear, 
while two glorious planets were going down behind a western ridge — 
the lighted tents looked warm under the spreading walnut-trees; and 
the guard were patrolling on the outskirts of the camp. We missed 
much of the peculiar beauty of Eden ; but I shall not forget what we 
did see there. 

The next day, May 8th, was to take us to the coast. We were to 
encamp within the sound of those breakers whose white line w^e had 
discerned from the summit of Lebanon. We had been advised to go 
down by the gorge of the Kadesha to Batroun, instead of pursuing the 
ordinary road towards Tripoli. There could be no doubt of the superior 
beauty of the route by the gorge ; but our adviser had forgotten that we 
had loaded mules with us; and that for such there was no proper track. 
We had so many delays from this cause, as to give us a most fatiguing 
day's journey. We were in the saddle eleven hours; but we did not 
regret our choice of route. 

We took a guide from Eden, who seemed to be highly pleased with 
his engagement. He spoke to every one we met, and hailed all the 
men at work in the fields, and all the women who were gathering leaves 
in the plantations; and the name Batroun was in every speech; but he 
did not always know the way, and twice, at least, led us wrong. At 
the outset, a thick mist came down upon us, and thoroughly wetted us. 
The road was a rough track, which sometimes failed us altogether; and 
where it did not, it was the most rugged we had met with, except one 
or two passes in Arabia. In the steepest part, where it was a mere 
staircase of rock, where I kept my seat only because the water was 
rushing down ankle deep, my mare made too long a step, and slipped 
on her knees; and at the moment, the crupper of my saddle broke— of 
course, the saddle fell over her neck, and I over her head. No one was 
with me but the guide; and he was in such consternation, that his only 
idea was to hold us both in our actual position till the rest of the party 
came up. There was no mischief done but the spoiling: of the comfort 
of my saddle, and that I twisted my ankle slightly, and tore my skirt to 
strips. We went down through the midst of terraced mulberry-planta- 
tions; and between walls where there was no room for the laden mules 
to pass; so that we were delayed while the fences were sufficiently 
pulled down to make a passage. When we came to narrow ways be- 
tween flat-roofed houses, the spectacle was very amusing. Our people 
got upon the roofs, and lifted up the burdens of the mules high enough 
33 



514 



EASTERN LIFE. 



to let the animals pass beneath, letting down the load again at the end 
of the strait. While one mule was passing in this manner, those behind 
occupied themselves with browsing on the grass and weeds which grew 
on the house tops. The charm of wild-flowers now again began to ap- 
pear; and the cyclamen and cistus bordered the track. 

When we emerged from the mist, the scene was glorious, — the gorge 
of the Kadesha opening below us, and the rich skirts of Lebanon stretch- 
ing away to the shore. The track down to the torrent was so narrov/ 
that the burdens of the mules occasionally struck against the rock on 
one side, throwing the animals off their balance, and threatening to 
knock them over the precipice on the other side. The drivers upheld 
them with all their strength : and one man, while doing this, missed 
his fooling, and tumbled over and over to a considerable depth. There 
he lay as if dead: and it was scarcely possible to doubt his being fatally 
hurt. Alee scrambled down after him, and performed a feat which 1 
should have thought impracticable for one so slightly made. He took 
up his more bulky comrade in his arms, and shook him up and down, 
as if he wished to dislocate any joints which might not have undergone 
that process already. After some minutes of this rough exercise, the 
restorative effects were apparent. The man showed himself capable 
of voluntary movement ; and was presently as cheerful as usual. Mean- 
time, the foremost of the party had discovered that the proper bridge 
over the torrent was gone. The piers and fragments showed us what 
a safe and handsome bridge we might have found there at some former 
time': but now there was only a slight temporary bridge over the most 
tumultuous part of the torrent, where it was made yet more noisy by 
the junction of a roaring rapid from a mill on the opposite side. It re- 
quired some little command of neive for us rational beings to pass it, 
leading our restless horses : but some of the mules had no idea of any 
self-command; and they positively refused to set foot on the bridge. 
By hood-winking, pulling, and many blows, all were forced over but 
two; — a little one, and one as large as a horse. We stood for more 
than half-an-hour in a damp mulberry plantation, watching the devices 
of the drivers. At last a strong body of them lifted up the hind legs of 
the animal, and forced it over the bridge, wheel-barrow fashion. Then 
the creatures had to be reloaded ; and much time was lost at this bridge. 
Next, one of the mules fell over, exactly as the driver had done on the 
other side: and he would have tumbled into the torrent, if three men 
had not jumped down in an instant, and propped up the animal with 
their shoulders, till his burden was removed, and he was led up to the 
path. By this time, we began to wonder when we should get to Ba- 
troun: and I, for one, hoped that we should encamp somewhere short 
of it. The men were breathless, and evidently not equal to many more 
such adventures this da}^ But as we wound up the gorge, among 
thickets of thorns and wild roses, it was a comfort to see Alee sitting 
sideways on his horse, smoking his chibouque, and trying to help laugh- 
ing at the tatters of my skirt. On the opposite side of the ravine, the 
effect was strange of the slanting strata, fringed and feathered with tall 



JOURNEY TO BATROUN. 



515 



upright trees. It made me so giddy that I could not look up at this 
confusion of lines while riding above a precipice. 

On emerging from the gorge, we saw Tripoli, on the shore to the 
north, and commanded a noble stretch of coast: but when we sat down 
for luncheon, the sea looked so far off that I did not believe we could 
reach it before evening: and indeed the enterprise was rash. On we 
went, over hills and round them, and dipping into valleys where we 
had no business, and from which our puzzled guide had some difficulty 
in extricating us. In clambering out of one of these, a young man of 
the company received a dreadful kick on the knee from one of the 
horses. He was faint with the pain : and we feared it was something 
worse than a bruise: but next day he was limping on again, so as to 
show that no bones were broken or displaced. Late in the afternoon, 
we saw so many villages, ruins, and convents placed on the crests of 
the hills, as to show that we were approaching the more peopled neigh- 
borhood of the coast. And when w^e inquired for Batroun, we were 
told it was "down below, — there!" but the gray sea-line was still very 
distant: and I knew that Batroun stood out into the sea. It was just 
twelve hours from breakfast, when we descended our last long and formi- 
dable hill; — a glaring limestone steep, with precipices on the left hand. 
At one point, the path made a sharp turn on the very verge of a pre- 
cipice, at a great height. My sight was dim, my head giddy, and my 
limbs trembling from exhaustion, — my fatigue having been greatly 
aggravated by the uneasiness of my saddle, since the accident in the 
morning. As I saw my companions passing this point singly and 
slowly, I had some doubts about doing it myself; and I carefully looked 
away from the precipice. At the most critical moment, — on the very 
verge, — my saddle turned. By a sudden check, I pulled my horse 
round, so as to fall on the ground instead of down the steep. My com- 
panions could not persuade me to mount again till we were on level 
ground. Mrs. Y. rode on to send me wine: and by means of that re- 
freshment, and Mr. E.'s stout stick to help my sprained ankle, I at last 
reached the bottom of the hill. Then there was nearly an hour's ride 
to Batroun. We found blessed rest when we got there. Our tents 
were pitched on a low grassy cliff just above the breakers, which 
lulled us with their steady roll and dash upon the shingle of the beach. 
The sun had set: but the gray clouds which hung above the sea still 
showed a crimson glow; and there was a streak of yellow light on the 
waters near the horizon. As I lay on the thick grass and daisies in the 
tent, listening to the sea, I felt very well satisfied with the adventures 
of the most fatiguing day of our travels. 

The next day, (Sunday, May 9th,) was easy enough. We had the 
refreshment of sea-bathing to begin with ; and the journey was short 
and safe : — safe for a party numerous enough to defy the robbers who 
are said to abound along this shore. — When we came forth in the morn- 
ing, we found that Batroun was on our right hand, standing out finely 
into the sea, on a picturesque rock. This place gives its tide to a Ma- 
ronite prelate ; and the inhabitants are chiefly Maronites. Some of 
them came about us, and seemed kindly and cheerful.— Our road this 



516 



EASTERN LIFE. 



day was almost wholly upon the cliffs, above the fine broken rocks of 
the shore, and sometimes descending among them. Almost all the 
men we met carried spears. At a sharp turn on the shore, when my 
companions had just disappeared behind a point before me, two men 
with spears ran up to me, one on each side my horse, and laid hold of 
the bridle, — one of them shaking his weapon in my face. Whether 
these were any of the coast robbers we had heard of, I do not know. 
My party were within call; but I thought there would be trouble and 
a scuffle if I brought our servants and these men into collision : so I 
twitched my rein out of their hands, laughed in their faces, and rode 
away. They made no attempt to stop me ; and their purpose may have 
been merely to beg. — At distances all along the shore are cafes, where 
the inhabitants sit under trellises, or garlanded sheds, to smoke and talk, 
— and also, it seemed, to take their meals. — Many anglers were busy 
at the pools among the rocks, — each one carrying his spear with his 
fishing-rod. Many women came down to the shore for the fish caught : 
and others were busy in the plantations, stripping the mulberry trees. 
— Nothing struck us more than the number of convents which crested 
the lower eminences of the Lebanon. With them, and the scattered 
villages, the region looked more peopled than any rural district we had 
seen for long. 

Batroun, on its promontory, was in view for some hours : and I think 
it was before we lost sight of Batroun that we saw, to the south, the 
headland on ^vhich stands Beirout. the limit of our journey ; — the port 
from which we were to set sail. — Between them, and nearer to Batroun, 
lies Djebail, — the old Cssarea: and there we stopped for our noon-day 
rest, — visiting the Citadel, — so battered by British guns, — and the 
granite pillars, which lie in large numbers in the sea, and are built into 
the neighboring walls. — About a mile south of Djebail, we crossed the 
Natural Bridge, which is as pretty as Natural Bridges always are; and 
soon after, turned up the rapid, clear stream which flows down Wadee 
Ibraheera Adonis. My mare seemed as little inclined to cross the 
bridge as the stream, — not liking its steep steps at both ends, its height, 
and its having no parapet. The banks below were rich with oleanders 
and other shrubs; and the whole scene so striking that we were glad 
to find our tents pitched not far off, on the shore, in the angle made by 
the river and the sea. It was yet early ; and we had many hours 
before us for enjoying our Sunday repose. There was something sad 
about it too : for this was to be our last evening in our tents. We had 
been very happy in our tents ; and I, for one, knew that I should never 
taste that kind of life again. For hours this day, I lay upon the sand, 
or walked along the margin of the waves ; and I seem now to be able 
to recall all that I saw, and ail that passed through my mind, during a 
day of busy thought. 

The blue ridge to the south, which shouted white specks in the sun- 
set light, was the limit of our travels, the dwellings of Beirout being 
visible even thus far. Before me lay the sea, our homeward path: 
and behind lay the East, — the birth-place of the Ideas which have 
hitherto governed mankind. Within me were stirring speculations 



• 



LAST ENCAMPMENT. 



517 



how long these ideas will govern mankind ; and how largely they will 
enter into the views which must, sooner or later, arise out of the West- 
ern Mind, to animate and enhghten future generations in all the regions 
of the earth. It is scarcely probable that the function of the western 
races should for ever continue to be to receive and amplify governing 
ideas, and never to originate any. — The world and human life are, as 
yet, obviously very young. Human existence is, as yet, truly infantine : 
infantine in its unconsciousness of its best powers, in the restriction of 
its knowledge, and in its subjection to its natural passions. It can 
hardly be but that, in its advance to its maturity, new departments of 
its strength will be developed, and the reflective and substantiating 
powers which characterize the Western Mind be brought into union with 
the Perceptive, Imaginative and Aspiring Faculty of the East, so as 
to originate a new order of knowledge and wisdom, and give a conti- 
nually higher and truer employment to the faculties of Reverence, self- 
government, and obedience w^hich are common to the whole race. 

From out of these speculations now spoke the still small voice of 
conscience, prescribing the part which every thoughtful person who 
had accepted the privilege of exploring these Eastern regions, should 
take in aid of the work of enlightening the human mind. Such a 
function, once recognized, is not to be declined by any one because his 
powers are humble, his knowledge partial, and his influence insignifi- 
cant in his own eyes. The thoughtful traveler must have some know- 
ledge, and some ideas which he could not have obtained at home, and 
which the generality of people at home cannot obtain for themselves. 
These he cannot, in fidelity to himself and his fellow-men, ignore, or 
bury out of the way of his convenience and repose. If he derives 
from his travels nothing but picturesque and amusing impressions, — 
nothing but mere pastime, — he uses like a child a most serious and 
manlike privilege. The humblest thinker, the most diffident inquirer, 
may be ashamed to make so mean a use of so gracious an opportunity. 
Moreover, he will be afraid of so selfish and undutiful a levity. He 
feels that, however lowly his powers, he must use such knowledge and 
reflective faculty as he has : and again, he feels that if he can speak, 
he must. 

He must speak ; and with fidelity. Bringing together, and testing 
with his best care, what he knows, he must say what he thinks, and all 
that he thinks, on the topics of which his mind is full. It is no 
concern of his whether what he thinks is new; nor, in this relation, 
whether it is abstractedly and absolutely true. Probably, no one can 
say anything which is abstractedly and absolutely true. When all 
thinkers say freely what is to them true, we shall know more of abstract 
and absolute truth than we have ever known yet. — It is no concern of 
the thoughtful traveler's whether what he says is familiar or strange, 
agreeable or unacceptable, to the prejudiced or to the wise. His only 
concern is to keep his fidelity to truth and man : to say simply and, if 
he can, fearlessly, what he has learned and concluded. If he be mis- 
taken, his errors will be all the less pernicious for being laid open to 
correction. If he be right, there will be so much accession, be it fittle 

33* 



518 



EASTERN LIFE. 



or much, to the wisdom of mankind. Either way, he will have dis- 
charged his errand; and it is so important to him to have done that, 
that he will think little in comparison of how his avowals will be received 
by any man, or any number of men. 

Such are the considerations which have impelled me, without con- 
ferring with inclination, or attending to any natural misgivings, to offer 
as I have done my views of some features of Eastern Life, present and 
past. I could not have accepted the privilege of my travels without 
accepting also their responsibilities. Having, as well as I could, en- 
deavored to discharge these responsibilities, I can henceforth look back 
upon the regions of the East with more freedom and pleasure than I 
could from that Syrian shore, in the hght of the last sunset I was ever 
to watch from the door of our tent. 



APPENDIX. 



A.— p. 22. 

De Sact, in his version of Abdallatif 's book, gives a long note* on the subject of 
the connection of Pompey's Pillar with the Alexandrian Academia and Library. 
After telling us that he will not enlarge on the evidences already offered by Messrs. 
Langles and White, nor insist on the testimony of Arabian writers who may have 
copied from Abdallatif, he proceeds : 

" I will just observe that there is much weight in the testimony of a judicious 
writer, who declares that he had himself seen the remains of these columns, and who 
founds whatever he says about their destruction, and about the date of that destruc- 
tion, on the unanimous report of all the inhabitants of Alexandria. I may add, that 
this event, which happened in the reign of Saladin, took place at the utmost thirty 
years before Abdallatif 's journey into Egypt: and also that the name of the column 
is a strong confirmation of the story. I can easily believe that there may be much 
exaggeration in the number of four hundred columns, and even that Karadja was 
guilty of nothing worse than completing the ruin of an edifice which time had 
already damaged, and employing the materials in a manner worthy of an ignorant 
Mussulman: but the foundation of the story is not, for this, the less certain and 
invincible. The only thing which could be desired for further confirmation would 
be some testimonies from Mohammedan writers of one or two centuries earlier than 
Abdallatif, who, in their descriptions of Alexandria, might mention these colonnades 
as existing in their times. Mr. White has satisfied some of our wishes in this mat- 
ter, in citing a passage from the abridger of Edrisi, who attests that the pillar in 
question belonged to an edifice situated in the middle of the city, ' whose columns,' 
says he, ' are still standing. The door jambs also remain. This edifice forms an 
oblong square ; there are sixteen columns on each of the shorter sides ; and sixty- 
seven on each of the longer. Towards the northern side, there is a great pillar 
adorned with a capital, and set on a pedestal of marble,' &c. Edrisi, of whose work 
this author gives a mere abridgment, wrote about the year 548 of the Hegira, and 
therefore fifty years before Abdallatif. His testimony therefore confirms what our 
author relates of the ruin of this edifice in the time of Saladin. — I can here cite other 
authorities equally positive." — De Sacy does accordingly give testimonies from Ara- 
bian writers prior to Edrisi; testimonies which leave no doubt what they were 
writing about, though some oriental exaggeration is mixed with their narratives. 
" These authorities," De Sacy goes on to say, " leave no doubt that the column now 
called Pompey's Pillar owes its Arabian name of Pillar of the Colonnades to the 
porticoes by which it was surrounded, and which were still standing, at least in 
part, in the time of Saladin." — After adducing the authority of some modern scholars 
in support of the facts under notice, De Sacy proceeds : 

" I cannot satisfy myself without adding to the testimony of the Arabian writers 
one much more ancient, which, it appears to me, has not been sufiiciently attended 
to, but which has not been neglected by M. Zoega. It is taken from the writings 
of the rhetorician Aphthonius.f Aphthonius, after having described the situation 

* Note 53, on Livre I., ch. 4. 

t Aphthonius, a rhetorician of Antioch, is supposed by some to have lived in the second 
century of our era, and by some later. His works, now little known, were in high esteem in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 



520 



APPENDIX. 



of what he calls the Acropolis of Alexandria, the elevation of the ground, the diffi- 
cult roads by which it is approached, the hundred steps which must be mounted to 
reach it, and the propylon which adorned the entrance, continues thus : ' When we 
enter the citadel, we find an area bounded by four equal sides; so that the shape of 
this edifice is that of a brick-mould (an oblong square). In the midst is a court 
surrounded by columns; and to this court porticoes succeed : the porticoes are also 
divided by columns of the same proportion. . . . Each portico termmates at 
the angle where another portico begins : and there is a double pillar vrhich belongs 
at the same time to both, — being the last of the one portico and the first of the other. 
Within the porticoes, apartments have been built: some, which contain books, are 
open to those who are disposed to apply themselves to the study of Philosophy, and 
offer to the whole city an easy means of acquiring wisdom : the others have been 
consecrated to the worship of the ancient gods. Tliese porticoes have a roof orna- 
mented with gilding, and. the capitals of the columns are of copper gilt. The court 
is decorated with embellishments of different kinds : each part has its own : there is 
one place where we see the battles of Perseus. In the midst of the court rises one 
pillar of extraordinary height, and which serves to make this spot conspicuous : for, 
when one arrives, one would not know where to go if this column did not serve as 
a sign to point out the ways. It makes the citadel as conspicuous to those on the 
sea as to those on land. On the capital of the pillar are placed all round the ele- 
ments of everything that exists.' — There are some variations," De Sacy goes on to 
observe, '"between the description of Aphthonius, and that of the Arabian authors: 
but they are of little consequence. I suppose that the rhetorician points out, in the 
last sentence, the dome erected on the capital of the pillar, which contained either 
the principal divinities to whom created things owe their existence, or symbols of 
the elements." De Sacy then declares his belief that this place is no other than the 
Serapeum, in arriving at which belief, he follows Strabo's account of the position 
of that temple. 

On the summit of the column is a socket. The question is what it held. Aph- 
thonius says, as we see, " the elements of everything that exists." Abdallatif saw 
on it a cupola: while, according to other Arabian writers, it once supported a bronze 
statue, which was melted down for coin. On the whole, it seems to De Sacy reason- 
able to suppose that the pillar supported a small observatory, wherein were repre- 
sented astronomical figures, and deposited the equinoctial circles spoken of as used 
for observations by other writers. 

Enough seems now to be known to relieve the traveler in Egypt from the blank 
uncertainty under which his predecessors have till recently gazed upon Pompey's 
Pillar. 

B.— p. 56. 

Directions have been given in abundance by preceding travelers to those who 
may follow them up the Nile and across the Desert, about preparations for the ex- 
pedition. Without repeating what Sir G. Wilkinson and others have said as well 
as possible, I may give a few hints which may be of use at least to ladies. 

Every traveler who is going to the East must, if he values health and comfort, 
take the sleeping apparatus which is called Levinge's bag. A full account of it is 
to be found in Sir G. Wilkinson's ^Modern Eg}'pt and Thebes." The makers must 
not persuade the purchaser to desert the original make, — with one circle of canes, — 
for a more complicated and expensive one. The simplest is the most convenient, 
and, as I can testify, answers every purpose. The comfort of this bag, to those who 
are nervous about vermin, or easily annoyed by them, is inestimable. The certainty 
that one is safe from every intruder tends of itself to give one good nights. The 
traveler will, of course, see that his bag is never left open for a moment; and that 
no one is ever allowed to put a hand within it who cannot be trusted for cleanliness. 
It is sufficiently aired by being shaken out of doors, — the muslin of the canopy being 
coarse enough to admit the air freely. The coarser the muslin the better, as long as 
it keeps out fleas. 

The traveler shotild not be alarmed if he finds he sleeps httle during such a 



APPENDIX. 



521 



jourtiey. If he is kept awake by vermin or by fever, of course, that is a great evil : 
but an easy quiet sleeplessness will do him less harm than he might suppose. 
There is, I imagine, something in the mode of life, — the absence of one's ordinary 
business, and the stimulating influences of an open air life which makes sleep less 
necessary than at home. However this may be, I know many travelers who found, 
as I did, that less sound sleep, and much less of it, than at home, did them no harm 
while abroad; and that they resumed their regular sleeping habits on their return. 
It is worth mentioning this, to save any inexperienced traveler from the supposition 
that he is or will be ill, because he cannot sleep as he does at home. 

As to the very disagreeable subject of the vermin which abound peculiarly in 
Egypt, — lice, — it is right to say a few words. After every effort to the contrary, I 
am compelled to believe that they are not always, — nor usually, — caught from the 
people about one : but that they appear of their own accord in one's clothes, if worn 
an hour too long. I do not recommend a discontinuance of flannel clothing in 
Egypt. I think it quite as much wanted there as anywhere else. But it must be 
carefully watched. The best way is to keep two articles in wear, for alternate 
days; — one on, and the other hanging up at the cabin window, — if there is an inner 
cabin. The crew wash for the traveler ; and he should be particular about having 
it done according to his own notions, and not theirs, about how often it should be. 
This extreme care about cleanliness is the only possible precaution, I believe : and 
it does not always avail : but it keeps dowli the evil to an endurable point. As far 
as our experience went, it was only within the limits of Egypt that the annoyance 
occurred at all. Fleas and bugs are met with : but not worse than at bad French 
and Italian inns. 

The traveler should carry half a dozen gimlets, stuck into a cork, and daily at 
hand. They serve as a bolt to doors which have no fastening, as pins to anything 
he wants to fasten or keep open, as pegs to hang clothes, or watch, or thermometer 
upon ; as a convenience in more ways than could be supposed beforehand. — Two or 
three squares of Mackintosh cloth are a great comfort, — for keeping bedding dry, — 
for ablution, and for holding one's clothes in bathing. By substituting them for car- 
pets, also, in Nile boats, there is a rehef from danger of vermin. 

As for dress, — the first consideration, both for gentlemen and ladies, is to have 
every possible article made of material that can be washed : — gloves, among the 
rest. Cotton or thread gloves are of no use, unless of the stoutest kind. The hands 
are almost as much burned with these as with none. Woodstock gloves (which bear 
washing well) are good, though, of course, they do not look very handsome. — Brown 
holland is the best material for ladies' dresses ; and nothing looks better, if set off 
with a little trimming of ribbon, which can be put on and taken off in a few minutes. 
— Round straw hats, with a broad brim, such as may be had at Cairo for 4s. or 5s., 
are the best head-covering. A double ribbon, which bears turning when faded, will 
last a long time, and looks better than a more flimsy kind. — There can hardly be too 
large a stock of thick-soled shoes and boots. The rocks of the Desert cut up pre- 
sently all but the stoutest shoes: and there are no more to be had. — Caps and frills 
of lace or muslin are not to be thought of, as they cannot be " got up," unless by the 
wearer's ovv'n hands. Habit-shirts of Irish linen or thick muslin will do: and, in- 
stead of caps, the tarboosh, when within the cabin or tent, is the most convenient, 
and certainly the most becoming head-gear : and the little cotton cap worn under it 
is washed without trouble. — Fans and goggles, — goggles of black woven wire, — are 
indispensable. — No lady who values her peace on the journey, or desires any free- 
dom of mind or movement, will take a maid. What can a poor English girl do who 
must dispense with home-comforts, and endure hardships that she never dreamed 
of, without the intellectual enjoyments which to her mistress compensate (if they do 
compensate) for the inconveniences of Eastern travel? If her mistress has any fore- 
sight, or any compassion, she will leave her at home. If not, she must make up her 
mind to ill-humor or tears, to the spectacle of wrath or despondency, all the way. 
— If she will have her maid, let her, at all events, have the girl taught to ride, — and 
to ride well : or she may have much to answer for. To begin to ride at her years 
is bad enough, even at home, where there may be a choice of horses, and the rides 



APPENDIX. 



are only moderate in length. What is a poor creature to do who is put upon a chance 
horse, ass, or camel, day by day, for rides of eight hours' long, for weeks together ? 
The fatigue and distress so caused are terrible to witness, as I can testify, — though 
we were happily warned in time, and went unincumbered by English servants al- 
together. Of course, the lady herself is sure of her ability to ride to this extent; or 
she will put herself into training before she leaves home. 

As to diet, — our party are all of opinion that it is the safest way to eat and 
drink, as nearly as possible, as one does at home. It may be worth mentioning that 
the syrups and acids which some travelers think they shall like in tlie Desert, are not 
wholesome, nor so refreshing as might be anticipated. Ale and porter are much 
better ; — as remarlcably wholesome and refreshing as they are at sea. Tea and 
coffee are pleasant everywhere. Ladies who have courage to do what is good for 
them, and agreeable to them, in new circumstances, in disregard of former preju- 
dices, will try the virtues of the chibouque while in the East : and if they like it, they 
will go on with it as long as they feel that they want it. The chibouque would not 
be in such universal use as it is in the East, if there were not some reason for it : 
and the reason is that it is usually found eminently good for health. I found it so : 
and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should 
not take their daily glass of sherry at home ; — an indulgence which I do not need. 
I continued the use of my chibouque for some weeks after my return ; and then left 
it off only on account of its inconvenience : and in the East, it is not inconvenient. 
The traveler there finds that his reasonable disgust at the cigar- smoking of our streets 
does not apply to the Eastern practice. The qualitj' of the tobacco, and the length 
of the pipe (in which the essential oil is condensed; instead of being imbibed by the 
smoker) make the whole affair something wholly different from any smoking known 
in England. I need not say that every traveler is absolutely obliged to appear to 
smoke, on all occasions of visiting in the East : and if any lady finds refreshment 
and health in the practice, I hope I need not say that she should continue it, as long 
as she is subject to the extraordinary fatigues of her new position. 

She must not expect health in those countries : and she had better not be discouraged 
or alarmed if she finds herself seldom in a state of bodily ease. If she takes rational 
care, and makes up her mind cheerfully to the temporary indisposition, she will 
probably be as well as ever when she gets home. Her chief care should be to look 
to the health of her mind, — to see that she keeps her faculties awake and free, 
whether she is ill or well; that in the future time she may hope to be at once in 
possession of her English health, and the stores of knoM'ledge and imagery she is 
laying up by her Eastern travel. 

C— p. 65. 

In a paper delivered by the Rev. Dr. Abeken before the Egyptian Society at 
Cairo, occurs the following passage. Dr. Abeken was a member of Dr. Lepsius's 
party. 

Speaking of Semne, in that part of Nubia which lies between Wadee Haifa and 
Dongola, Dr. Abeken says: 

" But the most interesting point connected with this locality, is a number of in- 
scriptions engraved partly on the rocks, partly on the walls built against the moun- 
tain, as substructions to the buildings. They are short, containing a date with a 
king's name from the above mentioned Twelfth Dynasty (most by Amenemha III.) 
and beginning with a hieroglyphical group, which at first sight it was evident could 
mean nothing but the height of tlu Kile at that date, being literally Mouth or Opening 
of the Nile. We were first struck by these inscriptions on some fallen blocks on 
the eastern bank, where it was evident from the position of the inscriptions that 
they had been engraven before the stones had fallen; afterwards we fomid many of 
them on the eastern bank in their original place, but at a height which the Nile 
never attains now, being no less than 9-10 metres above the present highest water. 
These ancient water-marks, therefore, appear to prove that before the time of the 
Shepherds, the Nile, tn that part of Nubia, must have risen much higher than at 
present; and do support, I think, most conclusively, the opinion that at that period 



APPENDIX. 



523 



there must have existed in the Cataracts a bar to the river much greater than what 
is now to be found there ; that owing to this bar, the Nile in those times rose in 
Nubia, not in Egypt, to a height never attained now, and thereby formed the deposit 
of fertile soil which we found in Upper Nubia, at distances and heights wholly 
unaccountable from its present rise ; that at a later period this bar was broken down 
by some great revolution, which also caused the fall of the above-mentioned blocks, 
and in consequence of which the waters above the Cataracts were brought down to 
the same level as those below them, and thus deprived Nubia to a great extent of 
the benefit of the inundation. — For a more detailed account, I must refer to Dr. 
Lepsius's able development of his views in his Report to the Berlin Academy of 
Sciences, where will also be seen the connection which he most ingeniously estab- 
lishes between these water-marks, belonging almost exclusively to one reign, and 
the great works said to have been executed by King Masris for the irrigation of the 
Fayoom and Lower Egypt." — Report of the Egyptian Society, 1845. — pp. 13-14. 



THE END. 



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